The cell phone company have to know where you are in order to get your calls to you and they can also use your mobile to remotely listen in to your conversations so why not use these features to help stop binge drinkers from disturbing the peace in residential areas in the small hours when the pubs and bars close.
You can picture the following scenario where the local beer monster (think Barney from Moe's bar in the Simpsons) is awakened by his mobile phone receiving a text message the morning after a particularly heavy session. He staggers out of bed to read it and it says "Your voice has been recorded making an illegal amount of noise on main street which is a designated low noise zone last night at 02:05am and you have been fined fifty big ones".The fine would then be added on to the phone bill or a bill sent from the police station or automatically deducted from the binger's bank account. A really noisy binge drinker could rack up a lot of fines in one night.
The users voice could be recorded during normal usage for comparison when they later get drunk and start making noise in a designated low noise area. It could also be coupled to the towns CCTV cameras so you could have visual evidence to back up the sound level evidence.So the binger could get a text message which said "You were recorded making an illegal amount of noise on main street which is a designated low-noise zone last night at 00:05am.The sound of breaking glass was also recorded in the local. Comparison with video evidence shows you throwing a brick through the bus shelter; you have been fined 250 big ones and 20 hours community service"
Sure people would take the battery out of the phone when they left the pub, leave it at home or use an unregistered pay as you go phone and yes there are civil liberties issues with this plan but you could limit its use to people who habitually get caught doing this type of crime and force them to carry the technology. Its nightmare scenario use would be to use it to automatically fine people who say anything deemed to be politically incorrect.
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Big brother is watching and listening to you. Holy bill or rights batman, what were you smoking!
Try these or these and lets keep our privacy to ourselves. Thank you.
I hear what you're saying about the bill of rights issues but we already tag offenders in the UK with tracking devices so that they dont have to go to jail and this idea would just be an extension to that. I guess that I could wear earplugs but this would'nt stop these binge drinking loons from turning our town centres into war zones every Friday and Saturday night (This is a real big problem here). The UK government have now decided to go for the 'brilliant' idea of 24 hour pub opening so people will be able to get smashed 24/7 with all the problems that go along with that.
I think the issue here is more a matter of law enforcement than a need for someone to contantly monitor everyone in the population. Perhaps a few police officers patroling the area at night is the answer. Top that off with a few heavy handed judges and I'd bet the problem will abate.
The problem is that there are not enough police and the jails are overflowing so in this state of affairs a good way to stop people behaving like this would be to hit them in the wallet or bank account a few times, they will soon get the message that they need to moderate their behaviour.