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Amazon Partnership With British Police Alarms Privacy Advocates
POLICE IN LANCASHIRE, a county in northwest England, have rolled out a program to broadcast crime updates, photos of wanted and missing people, and safety notifications to Amazon Echo owners. Since February, the free app has been available to those using Alexa, a cloud-based voice assistant hooked up to the Echo smart speaker. The first of its kind in the U.K., the program was developed by the police force’s innovations manager in a partnership with Amazon developers.
The program marks the latest example of third parties aiding, automating, and in some cases, replacing, the functions of law enforcement agencies — and raises privacy questions about Amazon’s role as an intermediary. Lancashire County will store citizens’ crime reports on Amazon’s servers, rather than those operated by the police. “If we can reduce demand into our call centers via the use of voice recognition or voice-enabled technology, and actually give the community the information they need without them needing to ring into police, then that’s massive,” Rob Flanagan, Lancashire Constabulary innovations manager, told the College of Policing conference, according to TechSpot.
But broadcasting is just the beginning of the county’s plans. The next iteration of the pilot program, expected to launch by year’s end, will allow users to report crimes directly to their smart speakers. After that, Flanagan imagines that Alexa might be used not just by civilians, but internally by officers for briefings and important information. “The cop [would] be able to say ‘Give me the warrant details for Joe Blocks,’ and then it would read back that person’s warrant and details and send the information to the offices mobile device that they have on their person,” Flanagan told Gizmodo. (Flanagan and the Lancashire Constabulary did not respond to repeated requests for comment).
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Fracking Has No Business in Lancashire – Local Firms Protest
Fracking Has No Business in Lancashire – Local Firms Protest
Local small businesses seem to be throwing their weight behind the anti-fracking movement rather than the pro-fracking business lobby in Lancashire, finds Ben Lucas, MA Investigative Journalist student at City University.
There are currently more businesses in Lancashire that oppose rather than support fracking, according to available data.
The industry-funded North West Energy Task Force lists 349 businesses that support fracking in the area. But as Greenpeace revealed this week, only 149 businesses, or less than half listed (43 percent), are actually from Lancashire.
The North West Energy Task Force is a pro-fracking lobby group set up and largely financed by energy companies Cuadrilla and Centrica.
Notable supporters from outside the county include Derbyshire firm PR Marriot Drilling Group and a Liverpool-based events company, both of which have had contracts with Cuadrilla in the past.
Local Businesses
However, at the end of January this year, more than 200 businesses from Lancashire signed aletter asking the County Council to reject fracking.
Upon inspection, the letter, drafted by Frack Free Lancashire, shows that there are currently 203 businesses that reject fracking in Lancashire – over 50 more than those in favour of onshore shale oil and gas. This is excluding the signatures of many residents’ associations and the three trade union councils of North East Lancashire, Preston and South Ribble, and Blackburn.
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