In your Sept. 7, issue you published a letter from Monroe County Sheriff's Office Deputy Becky Herrin that touted the app developed by the Sheriff's Office to provide up-to-date information to residents of the Florida Keys. Deputy Herrin praised all of the functionality of the app and the things that you could access with it.
Traffic was the item that caught my attention as that information could save me a great deal of time. I downloaded the app immediately and demonstrated it to my wife. However, I then asked myself why the app needed access to my photos and the other side of the story was revealed.
I reviewed the permissions that this app required in order to operate and found the following list:
The app may directly call a phone number. What number? Just my number or any number in my contacts list or any number they so happen to choose? Why would they need to call anyone other than my emergency contact or me?
The app can determine your approximate l ocation if you are connected to the telephone network or it can detect your precise location if your GPS is activated. I would normally accept this but it does allow you to be tracked and, with the proper software, it can be used to determine whether or not you are speeding.
The app has the ability to modify or delete the contents of your USB storage and it has the ability to read the contents of your USB storage. A search warrant would be required if this information was on your computer. The only reason I can think of for including this capability would be to spy on what you are doing and viewing. It might also be possible to access financial information that should remain private.
The app allows full network connection by whoever has access to the app at the Sheriff's Office. The app is able to receive data from the internet and view network connections. Again, this would require a search warrant if the data and connections were on your computer. How does this impac t your data plan if some deputy sheriff or other user decides to access the internet through your phone by using this app? This is, in my opinion, obviously an attempt to fight child pornography but I am not a trusting soul and would like to know how you prevent someone in the Sheriff's Office from accessing this material on your equipment and leaving you open to prosecution for something you did not do?
The app can prevent the phone from sleeping. The department was probably thinking that they could prevent criminals from turning off their phones to prevent tracking their movements. However, that means that the department can track anyone they want whether they have been charged criminally or not.
I understand that the intentions of the Sheriff's Office are honorable, but I have seen too many cases where these systems have been abused by law enforcement personnel with legitimate access or by others who somehow obtained access to the system. This app is open to sign ificant abuse and unintended consequences that, I believe, have not been considered by the Sheriff's Office. Its use by the department without substantial changes relating to individual privacy should not be allowed.
Some of the elements of the app are good and are useful to residents of the Keys. Other elements of the app should not be allowed to see the light of day.
William D. Haught, Key Largo
Editor's note: The following is a response from the Sheriff's Office.
Everyone has the option to download our app or not. We encourage the use of the app for people who want to know about serious accidents, arrests, sexual offenders or for those who would like to be able to contact our agency with comments, suggestions, compliments or for other reasons.
The app permissions you grant when you download our app are pretty standard. If you have a smartphone and have apps on it, you have most likely granted similar permissions in order to install them. For i nstance, the Associated Press app an Android device. The permissions for the news app in question include granting access to the phone's full network, viewing network connections, viewing my location, finding accounts on my device and reading and modifying SD card contents.
The permissions for my camera app – the one that comes installed on the phone – also include all of the above. These are normal permissions for apps on a smartphone. You can view full permissions for your apps by going to your phone settings.
There are reasons for these permissions. For instance, our app includes a small informational section that tells you the temperature and weather where you are, thus the need to know your location. Our app includes a section where you can contact our command staff and call them directly from the app. Thus the need to dial a phone number.
It asks permission to access the internet and for network information; our app pulls some of its information from th e internet including our blog, Twitter and Facebook feeds. Apps have to have the ability to alter SD cards because oftentimes, loading the app itself onto the phone adds information to these cards and most apps create a cache of information saved on the phone.
Everyone should certainly be careful when installing apps on their phone – the Google Play Store and the Apple Marketplace vet the applications they offer carefully but no process is perfect and there have been instances of applications installing malicious software on smartphone devices.
Source: Sheriff's Office app is too intrusive
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