Wearables

Law Enforcement Evolved: police using Google Glass and Galaxy S5 fingerprint scanners to fight crime

12

police officer with glass

With Google Glass finding a home in many different professional fields each and everyday, it was only a matter of time before law enforcement started to see its potential. Gulf News is reporting that traffic police in Dubai are starting to be issued Google Glass units to test a new system that allows them to take photos of speedsters and easily capture their license plates to run through a database.

The system is being trickled in as a trial for now, but Dubai Police Colonel Khalid Nasser Al Razooqi says they will seriously look to roll this system out on a wider, more official basis should things go well. “We at Dubai Police always try to adopt what is new in the market and we like to stay up-to-date,” said Col Al Razooqi, who acts as their general of smart services.

Glass obviously won’t be ideal for all law enforcement situations — trying to look at a tiny monitor while chasing down a suspect on foot or in the car is highly dangerous — but it sounds like it could have enough of an impact on their operations to be a valuable tool.

Galaxy S5 Fingerprint Reader

Then we spin the globe all the way over to Holland, where Dutch police are rumored to be teaming up with Samsung to provide officers with Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphones that can scan and identify fingerprints using its built-in fingerprint scanner.

This functionality obviously isn’t built into the Samsung Galaxy S5 by default, so they’re said to be cooking up custom applications for the task using Samsung’s SDK. The devices will also reportedly be loaded with apps that will allow the officers to scan badges, documents and licenses, as well as issue a ticket digitally.

All of this is to say one thing: if mobile tech wasn’t already identified as being important in recent years, then you can bet it is now. It’s important enough that it’s finding its way into a number of unrelated professions, and being used to make the lives of the professionals working them even easier, and important enough that countries are looking to use it in military to defend their nations. Not many other sects of personal electronics can boast that, and it sounds like all of it is here to stay (even if much of the world is having a difficult time accepting it).

Quentyn Kennemer
The "Google Phone" sounded too awesome to pass up, so I bought a G1. The rest is history. And yes, I know my name isn't Wilson.

Google surpasses Apple as world’s most valuable brand, we feign surprise

Previous article

Google Chrome update brings undo tab close feature, better support for multi-window

Next article

You may also like

12 Comments

  1. F the police…

      1. She’s too fake and photoshopped.

    1. o_0

  2. I am all for Google glass being used for security like law enforcement, fire men’s , marines. But use of Google glass is so broad for vision impaired, players, sports , office use etc, making open source os with finger print scanner is great for android and Samsung..we are w

  3. Can’t wait to see the corruption

  4. i stopped reading at “Dubai police” …in case you guys forgot thats an extremely wealthy country

  5. I’m really curious how they keep these things powered since they only have about an hours worth of battery life.

  6. Dubai cops have the coolest gear, glass and ferraris. Cant beat that

    1. A few Italian cops have Lamborghini patrol cars. I kid you not. Not the wealthiest country in the world at all.

  7. Goolroids just can’t come to terms with Glass being a flop. Oh well, they are fun to watch flounder.

    1. I have to admit that it’s a classic example of intelligent beings fearing what they don’t understand.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in Wearables