Bombers beware. There is a new technology available to law enforcement and it didn’t cost them anything. It’s called the public. And it’s the use of public shot and recorded pictures or video to find suspects in large crowds.
However, it’s more of a broad sword, rather than a precise tool. It’s not perfect by far and sometimes it may cause innocent people to get harassed over alleged pictures and videos, collected by their peers.
According to Yahoo News, using the crowd or crowdsourcing, may be a crime solving tool now and has been used before the Boston bombings. Vancouver and New York have used these crowd video gathering techniques to link attackers and rioters to crimes, which may normally go without suspect.
The social website Reddit.com was responsible for the exchange of pictures and videos, at the request of the Boston Police Department. Innocent people were identified as possible suspects and names and numbers were publicized, much to their dismay.
If you are asking yourself how this might invade your privacy? You are thinking correctly, it’s one of those grey areas that may infringe our liberties at some point at the cost of catching more criminals
