[New Feature] Dignitary Location Tracking with COTAK
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Some member agencies have requested the ability to track the locations of dignitaries such as elected officials during high-risk situations using COTAK. This use case is acceptable if this tracking is necessary to promote public safety and is part of your agency’s official duties.
Remember to get positive consent from all your users prior to deploying COTAK with them, and that per the COTAK agency agreement your agency is “not to use the COTAK System or any Data in any way that infringes on the rights of any individual, including, but not limited to, any Intellectual Property Rights, privacy rights or other civil liberties.”
For dignitaries a good option may be to issue them with the TAK Tracker app (available for Android and iOS), which lacks a map interface and simply provides the location of the smartphone to other TAK users. This app provides an easy-to-use option for non-public safety users since a user simply opens the app to begin providing their location to public safety users of the normal TAK apps. The project team has created a training video on the Android TAK Tracker app, and will release a similar video for the iOS version soon.
With this use case the COTAK project team wants to avoid dignitaries sharing their location on mutual aid channels or other channels that are automatically provided to public safety users of the system. To avoid this we have created a new responder type called “dignitary.” If you as an agency administrator select ONLY the responder type of “dignitary” for a new user, they will not get access to any TAK channels that are automatically provisioned in COTAK. Instead you will add the user’s account manually to a channel or channels within your agency, and the dignitary will share their location on only those channels you designate when they turn their TAK Tracker app on.
