Patent Boss Admits That The Patent Office Keeps Getting Flooded By More And More Bad Patents

UK Police Create Facebook App For Sending In Tips

from the e-snitch dept

Mon, Apr 21st 2008 1:45am — Mike Masnick

We've heard plenty of stories about police using social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to catch criminals who brag about their crimes on these social networks, but Alimas points us to a story about how police in Manchester are going much further. They've created a whole Facebook application designed to let people submit information and (they hope) help the police solve crimes. The app has a running news feed of stories about crimes, sometimes with requests for help in getting tips or even identifying people in a surveillance cam video. While some people may think of it as an "e-snitch" program, it's interesting to see the police go this far in trying to tap into a social network, and seems a lot more useful than just trolling social networks for dumb criminals. It's nice to see the police realizing that part of a social network is the two-way communication aspect, rather than just monitoring what's happening.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: facebook app, manchester, police, uk
Companies: facebook

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Max Powers, 21 Apr 2008 @ 2:10am

Crime Busters
I agree with you 100% on this. I hope this is a huge success and will spread to every city. Living in the Los Aneles area I see news stories everyday of shootings, robberies, and other types of crime. Just flashing a survellance tape for a few seconds on TV just isn't enough.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Alex, 21 Apr 2008 @ 3:01am

The problem...
... may be that the kind of people that would, most likely, give the best tips are the kind of people that may not want their contacts to see that they have e-snitch installed on their profile.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Powerkor, 21 Apr 2008 @ 5:06am

Its a good idea, and a step in the right direction for application development. I'm tired of seeing all the useless apps Facebook offers. E-snitch is a good start. I want to see it catch a crook, that will make us all smile.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jake, 21 Apr 2008 @ 5:46am

I'm somewhat dubious about how much use it will be -further to Alex's point, I bet they'll have a huge number of useless, false and outdated tips to sift through before they get anything of value- but it's certainly worth a try.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2008 @ 6:19am

Big Brother is watching you from the Ministry of Love.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Love
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
gr, 21 Apr 2008 @ 6:54am

Tips aren't their only source of data.
This raises some civil liberties problems, given how much of your and your friends' data apps can see.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jen, 9 Apr 2009 @ 11:42am

it needs to be anonymous to work
They need to use something like tip411 which is truly anonymous for people to actually give legitimate tips. Michigan City is doing it the right way and with lots of success, http://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/41534057.html. Good luck to the UK police however.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]