A Virtual Data Center

Background

The relationship between the police and the media is one of the most complicated relationships in today’s society. The roles of these two groups are in many ways the same: both are devoted to serving the public. But while this enables the police and the media to work together effectively at times, they often find themselves in conflict.

The following video can truly reflect the conflicts between the police and the media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv4vmfxGLiw

Police: The role of police in the society is often summarized as 'to protect and to serve." Simply put, it is the job of the police to protect the lives, safety and property of citizens in their community. Police officers patrol, investigate offenses, collect evidence and assist prosecutors in bringing offenders to trial. The police are bound to publicly distribute much information, but are also required to keep certain information confidential.

Media: The "media" is a term used to describe any form of mass communications, typically including television, newspapers, radio, magazines and, more recently, websites. In the society, the role of the media is to keep the public informed, and facilitate the free flow of ideas. This is crucial to democracy because it enables the voting citizens to stay informed. The media seeks to uncover the truth, especially when it is hidden.

Shared Information: Police and the media are frequently working together to distribute information to the public. In the event of a disaster or an emergency, the police are often a key source of updates and safety information for the media and, through them, members of the public. Police departments can also serve as experts, helping to provide understanding and depth in media coverage of crimes, investigations and prosecutions. Finally, police provide current information to the media on arrests, crimes and trends in each community.

So the efficient for the media and the police to exchange the useful and key information is very important. How to avoid conflicts between the police and the media, how to collaborate more efficiently, that is the main reason why we get this idea to build the virtual system.

Introduction of the Virtual System

The two participants in this virtual system are the police and the media association. The media association is an organization which consists of any form of mass communications, typically including television, newspapers, radio, magazines, and more recently, websites.

The main diagram is shown below:

The virtual system actually is an information center, the information in the system is uploaded both by the police and the media, and the police can view the information and modify it with reasonable reason. For data security concern, the police set up a security level system to limit and decide whether the media has the right to view and report the information in the virtual system.

The security level system is a 5-level system:

Level 1 is the green zone and the information in this level can be reported anytime by anyone;

In level 2, the Information can be reported with permission from the media’s senior supervisor;

In level 3, the media should discuss with the respective police officer to decide if information can be reported.

The level 4, is someway like the combination of level 2 and level 3, the Information can be reported with permission both from the senior supervisor and the respective police officer.

Level 5 is the level in which the information cannot be reported anyway.

You can have a more visual understanding of this virtual data center through the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-3ZiSwgpp8

To avoid the future conflicts may appear in the collaboration, both the media and the police need to set some protocols to monitor the behavior of each other.

After a long time negotiation (which will be further explained in the fourth part ‘Negotiation Process’), we two groups came up with 19-rule-protocols which have very detailed description on every conflict police and media may face in the future:

1.   Cost sharing by Police/Media is ---- 70%/30% during installation period and 50%/50% during operation period.

2.   Police can ask for last 10 years track record with tax file of each media employees and their spouse.

3.   Police can use the source of media.

4.   Police should update information in the system immediately.

5.   Media should get permission from police department before covering any news while police should guarantee a fast enough operation on the permission decision.

6.   Permission for the media is valid during one single case.

7.   Main server of the information center system will locate at police headquarter and a backup server will be in media association office.

8.   Police have the responsibility to take care of the cost of maintenance on main server while media take care of the backup server.

9.   Police will decide on the level of importance of information.

10. Media is free to cover the news in low levels.

11. Media can access and input data only but police shall have the right to modify the data. However, for data modification, police should have one level up verification and provide reasonable reason accepted by media.

12. Under the situation of reporting rejection, if any reason provided by the police is not within Appendix A, media has the right to publish that news.

13. Police is responsible for the facticity of the information in system.

14. Respective media personal will be responsible for his/her wrong data input.

15. Media will be responsible for any data security of their part.

16. Whenever a media person will access to any data, information will be sent to police department to responsible officer.

17. IM will have to be used in all the media personnel’s mobile phone and they cannot switch it off without permission of police department and should be accessible anytime in IM.

18. There will be a different unit to share open information where media can share information about any probable future issues. If it is found later that the media person had the information of a future incident beforehand but did not share here, s/he will be accused for that.

19. A reporter from the media cannot leave a job middle of a case. If this occurs, media should deal with the handover in advance and the reporter will be accused for any drawing out of the information about this case.

Appendix A:

a.          Being damage to national security.

b.          Will exposure the next step of police on cracking the criminal case.

Benefits for both Parties

First of all, each party may ask, WHY WE WILL COLLABORATE WITH HIM? So, let’s see what’s the aim or responsibility of each party.

Media: Their aim is to obtain first-handed materials and release truthful information in time.

Police: What they need to do is so straight-forward -- maintain the social order.

Therefore, when they collaborate, the aims of both parties should be guaranteed before exploring extra benefits.

Through the virtual system, an essential platform has been built for the media and police to communicate. The true information would spread faster and media won’t have to guess what’s happening or what the police or government going to do. The amount of misrepresentations would be reduced significantly. Once the public feel that the government is frank to them, the society will be more harmony. Till now, the basic aims of both parties have been satisfied, and it’s time to see what extra benefits it will bring to us.

a)   For Media: They can obtain authoritative information on crime faster, which results in more trustworthy reports. This will make the collaborated media more competitive among other media, and will improve their credibility among the public.

b)   For Police: They can have more channels to collect information which will contribute to a faster crime detection speed. It will also help to build good image of the police among the public, the misunderstanding between them would be reduced or eliminated.

c)   For Public: They are standing with the media to some extent. What the public want is just the truth. They hate to be cheated by the government or authority. With this virtual system, the public will be an absolute benefit party. They can get closer to the truth and know more about the social security.

As we all know, there was an earthquake happened in Ya’an, Sichuan Province, China recently. During this disaster, we realize the existence necessity of this platform between media and police. When facing this astonishing disaster, the public wants to know the real-time news and what they actually can do. However, they cannot find a right place. As a result, most of the public tends to search the latest news in the social network sites, such as ‘Sina Weibo’ (the same as Twitter). Whereas the phenomenon is that Weibo is fulfilled with messy and fake reports, such as non-state-certified statistics on numbers of injuries and deaths or exaggerate description on the earthquake and rescue activities, and there are even some bad institutions taking money from the donation of those kind-hearted but anxious public. The public need to be led to the right direction both on latest news and donation channel by authoritative information provided by trustworthy media.

To put in a nutshell, the information center will not only benefit both parties but also contribute to social security, institution honesty, right direction to people and emergency rescue, as long as the media can grasp true and effective information resources in time.

Negotiation Methods and Process

In this project, our team play as the Media and the morning group play as the Police.

The data center system has been built and there isn’t much change can be done. What we two group have to discuss is about the protocols. We both have to ensure that each of our interests won’t be violated.

Our two groups choose to use the Skype to communicate with each other. However, instant chatting doesn’t bring convenience or efficiency. The situation is like none of us is fully prepared for it. Unprepared questions often rose by the other side and neither of us was agree to give in since we both don’t realize what the other side mostly concern at the first several rounds. As a result, there are few solutions but more problems at the end of each chatting. Afterwards, we change to E-mail, a more efficient way. With e-mail, we both have more time to absorb each other’s thoughts and discuss within the group as well. Then we could give sufficient explanation to the other group so that the negotiation is more meaningful.

The following negotiation is mostly proceeding through e-mail.

At first, Police came up with 15 protocols as below:

It really leads us to the ‘lightning weather’ in this negotiation since these 15 protocols are too police-oriented. It appears like police can do anything they want such us use all the source of our media (No.4), decide on the level of importance of information (No. 9), etc., but in terms of our media, we have to obey lots of rules, have to get permission from them before doing anything (No. 6), what’s more, an IM will be used on our mobile phone which cannot be switched off (No.15)! It seems that they treated us like the prisoner instead of the collaborator. We have to say this is a protocol with 15 exploit rules.

Since the police haven’t taken our media’s interests into account, we have to modify some of the rules. However, if we just propose a totally opposite protocol, the situation won’t be better. So our group set our negotiation principle again and come up with a brand new negotiation schema. We set the freedom on reporting to be the highest concern of our interest. This means that we won’t compromise to any unfair rule that relevance to free reporting. After several rounds exploring, we found that police take information security as the most important. Then, we entered a “battle mode”.

We will try our best to avoid fighting, because that definitely won’t lead to a win-win situation. Since the police regard this virtual data center as part of their institution, why not just admit it and ask them to take on more responsibility, from the cost to the technical maintenance and the facticity of the information?! So that our media proposed the following 9-rule-protocol after we all agree with the schema.

In this protocol, we mainly negotiate on three points: (1) THE COST. Because the virtual system is part of the police institution, they should take majority of the cost and be in charge of all the technical maintenance of two servers. (2) THE PERMISSION. We agree on getting permission from the police before viewing or reporting, but they should guarantee a rapid enough operation process and the valid time of permission should be able to last a period of time as well. (3) REPORT FREEDOM. In order to have more freedom on reporting, we ask for free viewing and reporting on low level information. What’s more, the modification of information or rejection on reporting raised by police should under reasonable and acceptable reason. If not, our media has the right to publish that news without permission.

We consider the 9^th rule of our protocol as the trump card for us. We are almost totally free on reporting with this rule.

Of course the police don’t agree on all the rules. After many rounds of arguing, persuading, discussing and modifying, the final version of the protocol is consisted of 19 rules as we listed at the beginning of our blog (in part 2 ‘Introduction of Virtual System’). Some of the rules proposed by the police have been deleted, most of the rules raised by both of us have been combined and modified, and meanwhile, some rules that relevant to the interests that each of us concerned most have remained unchanged. With this 19-rule-protocol, the future possible conflicts will be solved more convincible, the police consolidate their power and leading position while the media are able to get to the truth closer and faster and expand their freedom on reporting to the maximum.

As you can see, we media have fought for our interests without directly fighting with the police during this negotiation. We choose to give what the police think a lot of to them such as the power of making decision, and reserve the most precious part for our media to ourselves such as getting closer to the truth and reporting freely. The ultimate result is almost like the pie graph shows below.

It appears that Police has gained an extra advantage because the amount of rules catered to their profits is much more than Media, which satisfied their vanity and insured their leading position. Meanwhile, our Media has kept the ‘diamond’ – freedom on reporting -- by our side even though it seems that we have given way to them because we barely strive for the amount of rules.

Therefore, both of us have got what we want, and the public will definitely be a big beneficiary. We’d like to say, this is a win-win situation indeed.