China Wages Cell-Phone Campaign Against Crooks

from the whatever-works dept

It's been almsot exactly two years since Dutch police first started experimenting with sending annoying text messages to the mobile phones of thieves. Now, it appears the Chinese police are using a similar tactic. Apparently, some scam-artists in China put up tiny ads offering to help people get fake IDs or fake academic certificates. The police have copied down the phone numbers in those ads and are now bombarding the phones with text messages saying: "You have broken the law by posting illegal ads. You must immediately stop this activity and go to the Hangzhou Urban Administrative Bureau for punishment." They claim the tactic has been successful, but I really doubt that anyone is turning themselves in for such a crime. Still, in an increasingly connected world, it's interesting to see how even the relationship between police and criminals are changing.
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  • identicon
    dorpus, 24 Mar 2003 @ 9:40am

    Sounds like Charleston

    Charleston, SC had a dial-in service for police to come to a home to witness a spanking, so that no accusations of child abuse would occur.

    In the future, we could have web-based order forms for beating the crap out of bad children in a legally approved way.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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