turning to the effort to track down the stolen car which took authorities to Connecticut last Friday Police Credit the car manufacturer for helping them western Mass news reporter Reagan lre now joins us live in studio with more on how data can help in these situations rean Chris I spoke with an attorney who tells me location data can be vital in these types of High Press situations however when does this use of Data Tracking become an invasion of privacy the city of chabe had a suspend full mor
ning last Friday after a red Toyota Camry left running with a three-year-old boy strapped in his car seat was stolen an amber alert was quickly issued and police were able to locate the car and boy quickly with Massachusetts State Police issuing a statement reading in part with the cooperation of Toyota led to the recovery of the vehicle parked and unoccupied in a Shopping Plaza parking lot it goes on to say that the vehicle's location was pinpointed at approximately 10:30 a.m. to learn more abo
ut investigations like this one western Mass news spoke with Springfield police spokesperson Ryan Walsh whose Department was not involved in this particular case he tells us every circumstance is unique but almost always the first thing police try to gather is a last known location by the time a car is gone you're trying to find out what kind of car it is you're utilizing license plate information you're trying to find out which direction of traveled and you're getting the word out to other poli
ce departments or utilizing cameras to see if you can potentially see that car these are all tools used in Friday's successful search however it seems the use of geographical location data may have also played a significant role Walsh tells us this technology is only used in emergencies unless it rises to a case of like an amber alert or something like that it's nothing that would be used on a daily basis local attorney Joseph aella tells us he sees this data being used in investigations often i
nformation collected for instance by a car company or or various providers it's really up to that company uh because you have no right to privacy in any of that data uh no expectation of privacy but western Mass news want to know when this could become an invasion of privacy people have no idea um until it's they're on the wrong side of that whether they commit a crime or not till they see how powerful it makes the government to have access to to to knowing where you were at any particular time
pachella says typically police need a warrant before a company can or will give out any data in order to protect their stakeholders as well as their bottom line however he says this often works on a case-by casee basis a lot of it is community based uh in that you know would the vast majority of citizens in our community uh feel like they'd rather have the car company give the data out for the child in the car seat that's been stolen I think the answer is absolutely yes you know that as a societ
y we will tolerate that kind of a thing it's it's an emergency there's no you know time is of the essence we all want that child to be found Pella adds that in the case of this missing boy in chicke the investigators demonstrated excellent police work utilizing Toyota to bring him the bring to bring the boy home western Mass news did reach out to Toyota however they did not want to comment reporting live in studio ran ly for western Mass news
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