Archive Please

[Riderz]

Not needed

Edited January 28, 2020 by Tezhl
Refined

[Brixton]

As a Police Officer myself, I would not mind having this, but I also dont mind how it is now. I will support this.

[Pistol Pete]

+1. I think the phone number should be acquired through RP. This doesn't necessarily mean directly from the player but maybe a detective would have to file a warrant RP'ly to obtain the number from the carrier (just like they would IRL). A reason would be given and it would be up to a higher-up member of PD to grant or deny the request. This would make detective RP better as they would now need to find out the number. They could start with things such as the IC section on the forums (adverts etc) and even try and coax other players into giving up a number. The latter having very cool possibilities.

This way, changing number by deleting your phone would have much more benefit. You'd temporarily be able to avoid traces. 

All this ignores the possibility of burner phones which would equally be as cool for criminals.

[HaminLord]

Sorry but what randoms traces are you talking about? 

I've never seen anyone "abuse" or "conduct random traces" in the LSPD, there is no benefit to it nor is it allowed. And quite surprisingly, I'm rather inclined to -1 this suggestion, the reason being to it is that RPly San Andreas is a police state, meaning that it wouldn't be that far fetched to imagine the government would have some sort of logs as to who bought what phone with what number. Even with this information, there is nothing I or almost any other member of the LSPD can do, we can text or call you sure, but at the end of the day the only people who can do anything with your number are members of IB, who have their own set protocols and procedures which to what I've heard, are taken seriously and strictly.

On the other hand, I'd be totally down for something such as burner phones and whatnot, ones you could perhaps order through imports or simply buy from certain locations for a higher price than that of a standard phone which would have its own number, one that is not visible on the MDC while searching one's name.

 

[JakeInnit_]

This would be nice, would allow criminals to effectively use burner phones. +1

[Msato]

+1 on to this overall,

In my opinion the active phone numbers should be stored on a database, but they should not link straight to full character names without any player input.

Perhaps turn the automatic "wanted board" into a more manual process where officers input details to it themselves such as outstanding charges etc.

If the name were removed, as Jake said - it would allow use of burner phones, bringing a new dynamic to Crim RP, instead of being restricted to no phone access unless you want auto traced in some instances.

[smutty]

Tracing a line is not something taken lightly by PD. There is an internal process and certain conditions need to be met before it's even considered. 

With that said, without any previous interaction with PD, I agree, they shouldn't have your number in the MDC. 

[Marca]

I sadly cannot agree with this. First of all, 911 calls display the callers name. While the character may not say their name during a 911 call, it's safe to assume the government in the background does keep track of phone numbers and whom it belongs to. But the biggest and most valuable tool gang members have are the very powerful radios that seem to have infinite range. There are IC ways to establish a secure communication line to keep PD off of you or minimize the chances they can get to you. Heck, there's also a way to use other peoples phone numbers so nothing gets tracked to you at all.

But like it was said before, tracing is very limited and has a lot of regulations. 90% of the PD don't have any use for the phone numbers at all, it only comes in handy when you have to call the person to notify them of something or get more information. I have also never heard of anyone abusing this system either, so I see no reason why such information would be removed from the MDC.

[alexalex303]

You call 911, you call everyone, you use the phone actively, and you want the police to not have access to it? We're roleplaying in the US, not Somalia.

Keep your phone off or risk it. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[ArcAngel]

+1 I've had multiple occasions where an officer or someone from the DOC has used MDC to obtain my number..

[MohammedAli]

Might as well start suggesting to remove the MDC as a whole at this rate.

-1

You phone the police/medic but not expect us to have contact back.

Turn your phone off if you don't want LSPD tracing it or phoning you. 

[HaminLord]

1 hour ago, SkuLLar said:

+1, police have alot of things they can metagame about, using the MDC either have more strict rules about it or better have the feature removed,

First of all, there already are strict policies and rules regarding this.

Second of all, sure, I have your number, what can I do with it? Text you for that Dukes you put on High-End? If you remove the feature, not only will it affect tracing which happens rarely than you'd expect, but a large part of the LSPD's tasks, including but not limited to finding stolen vehicles and contacting the owner(s), finding stolen firearms and contacting the owners and etcetera.

19 minutes ago, arcangel said:

+1 I've had multiple occasions where an officer or someone from the DOC has used MDC to obtain my number..

If you truly have, file an IA report regarding the number, if its from unkown, you're more than welcome to ask a staff member so you may file an OOC IA report or even a forum report for not conducting faction duties. I find it hard to believe someone would do this without a valid cause, and I'm also sure that if you take action against it by looking for whoever did it and making sure you forward it to his superiors he will be punished accordingly.

[ArcAngel]

Just now, HaminLord said:

If you truly have, file an IA report regarding the number, if its from unkown, you're more than welcome to ask a staff member so you may file an OOC IA report or even a forum report for not conducting faction duties. I find it hard to believe someone would do this without a valid cause, and I'm also sure that if you take action against it by looking for whoever did it and making sure you forward it to his superiors he will be punished accordingly.

This was a while ago on an old character that is now CK'd.
It was a DOC officer who openly admitted to obtaining my number so he could 'ask me on a date'.
As it was a while ago, i don't have proof of this, also, pretty sure it was over VOIP and I dont have shadowplay or anything since my CPU sucks and i dont have much memory.

[MohammedAli]

4 minutes ago, arcangel said:

This was a while ago on an old character that is now CK'd.
It was a DOC officer who openly admitted to obtaining my number so he could 'ask me on a date'.
As it was a while ago, i don't have proof of this, also, pretty sure it was over VOIP and I dont have shadowplay or anything since my CPU sucks and i dont have much memory.

Sounds like someone abusing the resources he has as an Officer.

Also sounds like an IC issue which can be dealt with through an Internal Affairs report.

Don't see why we should remove the feature from MDC because of this.

[Msato]

Good to see that PD are open to suggestions, 

Perhaps if the tracking wasnt done every 5 seconds by certain members, people wouldn't find this an issue. 

Overall phones should be held in database yes, but I'm fully against any form of script sided automation to back RP as it reduces player input. 

Have a detective gather your phone number and add it to the database, like it would be registered irl. 

This is a suggestion in relation to the issue of 0 burner phones existing. In what situation IRL would you see leaders of a cartel using a pay monthly contract phones that is added to a database. 

Edited September 9, 2019 by CallumMontie

[Chrisy]

I think this suggestion is good as in certain circumstances phone numbers would not be obtainable. 

But this suggestion would be better and make more sense if we had the option to own more than one phone for example; a burner phone. This way we could have a separate phone strictly for criminal activities, sneaking around whatever you would want the phone for. This would allow phones to be destroyed after one use/job/it gets compromised by PD. 

Yes, there is an option to get a new phone number now but this option will completely wipe your contacts, your number and it creates difficulty to keep in contact with players if you were to delete your phone every couple of days which is where burner phones fall under. 

 

Quote

Might as well start suggesting to remove the MDC as a whole at this rate.

Great idea also, nice to see when suggestions are made which would "disadvantage" PD in the slightest are taken so negatively even though throughout the last year PD have had nothing but benefits due to the increase of civilian RP which in the end hurts criminals to create as it results in negatives towards the criminals. This and another suggestion about searching IDs and you're saying to remove the whole MDC as if they are big changes. IDs have no reason to be searched whatsoever, you either identify the person or don't and miss out or if you and need to carry out detective roleplay you have their ID in which you can make use of the lovely /ldo feature which was recently added. If it carries on throughout a long period of time I'm sure a member of staff within the faction would be more than happy to take two seconds out of their time to search an ID and unix for you guys to continue your roleplay.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Chrisy

[obama]

+1 , people will not need to turn their phone off when they are wanted but they can be traced if they call someone or text him .

Edited September 10, 2019 by obama

[alexalex303]

nevermind.

Edited September 10, 2019 by alexalex303

[Hazel]

Let me shine some light onto tracing, why making us manually keep track of phone is unfeasible and the “traces every 5 seconds” allegation

 

Members of the Investigations Bureau are held to strict regulations when it comes to tracing anyone, gang member or otherwise. Those restrictions rely heavily on us knowing that the phone number belongs to a certain person.

 

As for obtaining phone numbers IC and keeping a database for it, I don’t see it as feasible, because:

• As a Detective, absolutely every single high profile criminal just immediately knows I’m a Detective, even if I’m just patrolling in an unmarked cruiser without a kevlar vest. I get that information circles around, but it’s also random civilians, who know what unmarked cruisers look like on GTA, just yelling “hello Detective” as they run a red light past me.

• We can’t be certain of the truthfulness of numbers obtained from a criminal, which would clash with our internal protocols and we could find a farmer John Doe somewhere instead of Jin Koi or any other criminal we were after, which again, clashes with our regulations.

• The LSPD already has a very large amount of paperwork and things to keep track of. I personally can spend an entire day shifting through paperwork without a single chance of actually playing the game and I’m not in a very high position where the paperwork just piles up more. There are already some non-optional paperwork bits, such as firearm revoke requests, that are forgotten because there’s so much else to keep track of ontop as well. Having to keep track of every phone number and actively updating them with maybe accurate information isn’t realistic from a workload perspective.

 

As for gang members being traced every 5 seconds, like it was mentioned and refered to in an earlier reply, that can only be done by less than five people, it’s not done as often as you think and is actively done by three at most with it’s own set of restrictions and requirements to have been met before it’s even allowed.

 

So no, I don’t think us having phone numbers is unrealistic and should be yeeted out just like that.

 I do believe that something like burner phones, with restrictions such as cost per phone call minute / message or a set amount of prepaid messages before it gets locked could be added, restricted like that mostly to reduce the inevitable abuse and constant overusage.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Hazel

[ruekatu]

-1     

So this is an RP server correct?  Thus we want this to be a real life as possible, and yes I will obviously admit there are such things as burner phones however, everything that you do in real life is monitored, it is logged. Something simple as a phone number is registered to an owner.. in real life you buy a phone, you get a number.. that is your number, they can find that out. because its your number. 

There are only a certain amount of people that can use the tracking, if those certain people are found to have misused it they will get instant bollocking, they would most likely be fired and banned from the server for breaking rules. Yes anyone on PD can get your number and call you but as said that is something they can do in real life anyway, yet it doesn't mean we can track them.. just means that we can call you. and in some cases that helps us. When there is a stolen car, we can call the owner and tell them we have it, or ask if the person thats driving has person.

Now if you had suggested something like blocking part of the number unless obtained through a warrant then that would be something id personally +1.. Yet all i ever see on the suggestions are just things being removed. Not improved.

[Msato]

52 minutes ago, Hazel said:

Members of the Investigations Bureau are held to strict regulations when it comes to tracing anyone, gang member or otherwise. Those restrictions rely heavily on us knowing that the phone number belongs to a certain person.

These "restrictions" are not strict in the slightest. The moment someone is wanted, their phone number and name are auto populated onto the "wanted list" whenever that player is online, without any player input. The number is then selected from there and traced at will - once this number has been seen once, a detective can trace this as they please.

55 minutes ago, Hazel said:

• As a Detective, absolutely every single high profile criminal just immediately knows I’m a Detective, even if I’m just patrolling in an unmarked cruiser without a kevlar vest. I get that information circles around, but it’s also random civilians, who know what unmarked cruisers look like on GTA, just yelling “hello Detective” as they run a red light past me.

This seems like an IC problem, perhaps be a better detective. Make use of disguises and masks as criminals have to and don't drive a black bog standard buffalo. There have been detectives in the past who have successfully infiltrated entire gangs and not get caught. High profile criminals such as Mafia & Cartel members would 100% know the detectives of their city IRL, this is not unrealistic in any form.

58 minutes ago, Hazel said:

• We can’t be certain of the truthfulness of numbers obtained from a criminal, which would clash with our internal protocols and we could find a farmer John Doe somewhere instead of Jin Koi or any other criminal we were after, which again, clashes with our regulations.

Again another IC issue that should not restrict an auto-populating system from being removed. You expect criminals to be truthful to cops you have another thing coming. Perhaps put in manual work and ensure that number ties with the correct person before acting on the evidence. Using regulations as a method to have a system not reworked is astonishing. It's essentially please don't change this system as it will hinder me ICly.

1 hour ago, Hazel said:

• The LSPD already has a very large amount of paperwork and things to keep track of. I personally can spend an entire day shifting through paperwork without a single chance of actually playing the game and I’m not in a very high position where the paperwork just piles up more. There are already some non-optional paperwork bits, such as firearm revoke requests, that are forgotten because there’s so much else to keep track of ontop as well. Having to keep track of every phone number and actively updating them with maybe accurate information isn’t realistic from a workload perspective.

People seem to forget the amount of criminals that have experienced PD on alts etc. 80% of the paperwork is entirely optional, there will be that one person that chooses to do every piece of paper work available. Back when I was PD we had an officer do close to 300 impound reports in a month - entirely optional. Now if 1 person can do this, there is easily the potential for 120 people to work together in creating a database of phone numbers.

1 hour ago, Hazel said:

As for gang members being traced every 5 seconds, like it was mentioned and refered to in an earlier reply, that can only be done by less than five people, it’s not done as often as you think and is actively done by three at most with it’s own set of restrictions and requirements to have been met before it’s even allowed.

Just because there is a limited amount of access to a system, it does not it has now flaws. Take a look at illegal gun importing. A very low number of people actually have access to this yet people complain that "Every criminal runs around with a heavy" - This shows that a small number of people can use a specific system to effect the entire server.

Overall I agree with you that the initial suggestion was a little lacking - People have added good comments with suggestion developments since then. I know this will come across like I am only vouching for the criminal side, but it's about finding the middle ground of a good system. An system back by the automatic MDC Database, that requires zero player input to gather any information.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you don't take this as a ill intent.

 

[Hazel]

@CallumMontie While I understand that some of these are IC issues, I brought them forth to show and explain our side.

 

Tracing protocols are strict, we are not allowed to trace every John Doe with an Unlicensed Firearm charge or Jane Doe with Reckless Operation. I get that from the criminal side, it might appear like we are just tracing anyone we fancy from the warrants list but that is definitely not the case.

 

I don’t disagree with us having to be more sneaky and I agree it’s an IC issue, but I was bringing it forth from the aspect that everyone makes that connection based on the easily identifiable GTA unmarked cruisers, that was the main point of it.

 

I don’t disagree with protocols being IC and that they should remain that way, but I brought them up, to give more insight. I don’t expect criminals to be truthful at all at any point, especially when it comes giving us information, but I brought it up, because I wanted to give, again, more insight into why we need it and how it wouldn’t work with our regulations. I know you can always change IC regulations, however those take time if this were to be changed one random day.

 

As for the paperwork, the amount that is optional diminishes with each rank while the non-optional increases. A regular PO1-PO3 might have the time to gather phone numbers and keep track of them, but it’s also more difficult for them to acquire them. Detectives are the ones with the tools to acquire them but are burdened by a lot of responsibilities outside of their Detective work that criminals don’t take into account as it doesn’t directly affect them. What I’m trying to say is that while yes, it would be possible, it’ll also add to the time spent on the forums updating, going over phone numbers and fact checking them instead of being in the field. 

 

There might be flaws with the system / protocols for the small number of people that have access to extended tracing permissions that I’m not seeing ( probably because I know how it works but can’t really share the details ). Yes, I agree, a small number of people can affect a majority, however, I mentioned it mostly to counter the stigma that every Detective just traces gang members for no reason, just because they are wearing a certain colour / style.

 

Not taking your feedback as ill intent, I’m mostly trying to explain the Detective side and how losing phone numbers from the MDC / making it manual would affect us and the LSPD.

 

I’m still against the initial suggestion but burner phones with restrictions could be neat for both Criminals and Detectives.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Hazel

[Riderz]

Loving some of the suggestion posted, the main point of this thread is to expand how these operations are conducted and benefit both sides, and at least addressing the issue. 

Edited September 10, 2019 by Tezhl

[Xoza]

-1

• That's what radios are for, an untraceable form of communication. You can destroy your phone to remove the number or leave it off. There are plenty that don't use phones at all and always have it off.
• You can essentially 'create' your own burner phone already. Buy Phone > Make Call > Destroy Phone. A company wouldn't sell you a cheap phone, a phone is still a phone.
• Acquiring numbers from MDC is only for official use only and should not be saved.
  • Getting and giving out a number from the MDC without permission is a breach of privacy and anyone involved should face consequences, especially officers.
• Don't need to trace your number to find you, You sport the same colors, drive the same vehicles and wear the same clothing and you make a name for yourself that makes you easy to identify.

 

Thought of some RP reasons it exists how it is.

Crime is well known to be rampant in San Andreas. The government and companies apply restrictions to prevent or reduce illicit use for liability reasons.

• Radio tower repeaters are privately owned, easy to install and unsecured. The state has their own that are secure though for government uses.
• Cell towers are owned and operated by the government and companies.
• Mobile companies must register a name when a phone is purchased, registering that information with the government.
• If you make a 911 call, the operator will not accept your call unless you identify yourself as the owner of that number.

I think fake identities would actually be a better first step.

Be glad it's only your phone number and license plates that are documented, registry of property and home ownership and addresses should definitely be documented as well and is far more realistic.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Xoza

[krooks365]

+1 to burner phones.