Monday, September 9, 2013

Smart devices and Nigeria Police Force bribe videos

NOWADAYS, every part of our lives' activities are showcased online and so was the recent action involving a Police Officer, who was demanding bribe from a motorist for whatever reason and ended up as a social media viral episode, especially on the YouTube.

For the avoidance of doubt the incident led to the sacking of the Police Sergeant Christopher Omeleze and barely a week after, an amateur video of a Police woman demanding for a N100 bribe from commercial motorist went viral on YouTube.

DigitalSENSE Business News gathered that as at the time of filing this report, the Police woman caught on tape demanding N100 bribe, reportedly in custody of the Lagos State Police command.

The act of videoing corruptive tendencies as this, even by motorists or their passengers is welcomed and a good development which shows that Nigerians are putting into good use the features of the prevalent smartphones.

This is coming as the Lagos State Police Command arrested a medical representative, Mr. Gregory Muonylilo, for allegedly video recording the policemen who were arresting a commercial motorcyclist with his mobile phone at the Amuwo Odofin area of the state by policemen attached to Area E Command.

Citizens must be wary bearing in mind that since the dismissal of a police sergeant, Chris Omeleze, who was caught on camera demanding bribe from a motorist, policemen are likely to become paranoid about who is recording their activities and obviously for what.

Police Public Relations Officer, Ngozi Braide was reportedly quoted as denying claims that the policemen were harassing the okada rider, but rather doing their official job. “The policemen were on legal duty and they had apprehended an okada rider for riding on a restricted route. I spoke to the man who was arrested and he never told me that the policemen were asking for bribe from the commercial motorcyclist they were trying to arrest. The man was recording and we do not know his motive.”

A smartphone is a mobile phone built on a mobile operating system, with more advanced computing capability and connectivity than a feature or legacy phone. Feature or legacy phones are usually referred to those that have rigid outlook in its operational standards as well as lack of interoperability difficulties.

The first smartphones combined the functions of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), with a mobile phone. Later models added the functionality of portable media players, low-end compact digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation units to form one multi-use device.

Experts says that GPS is a space-based satellite navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites.

However, many modern smartphones come with high-resolution touch screens and web browsers that display standard web pages as well as mobile-optimized sites, in addition to High-speed data access provided by Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) and mobile broadband.

In recent years, mostly in the last five years, the rapid developments of mobile device applications markets and of mobile commerce have been drivers of smartphone adoption. For instance, the mobile Operating Systems (OS) used by modern smartphones include Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS, Nokia’s Symbian, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, Samsung’s Bada, Microsoft’s Windows Phone, Hewlett-Packard’s webOS, and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo and MeeGo. A few other upcoming operating systems are Mozilla’s Firefox OS, Canonical Ltd’s Ubuntu Phone, and Tizen.

Worldwide sales of smartphones exceeded those of feature or legacy phones in early 2013. As of July 18, 2013, 90 per cent of global handset sales are attributed to the purchase of iPhone and Android smartphones.

It is important that those who indulge in recording with their mobile phones or other mobile devices should be tactful or desist from such as this may land them into trouble and could also bring fame to them. The caution here is safety and staying out of trouble.
... Making SENSE of digital revolution!

No comments: