By Nate Anderson | Published: December 03, 2008 – 06:15AM CT

Say you need to solve an axe murder—what do you do? If you’re a detective in a 19th-century Russian novel, you play mind games with the unstable suspect until he turns himself in. If you’re a 21st-century cop, you check the head games at the office door and turn instead to databases, mashups, maps, and an Internet-connected public. Welcome to Crime and Punishment 2.0.

Organizations like the FBI have taken Internet tips for quite some time, using the Internet to replace paper submissions or phone calls, but cops are moving into new territory with a new set of tools. Massachusetts is getting “MassGangs,” a statewide database of gangbangers that includes pictures of tattoos and uses facial recognition software. Funded by a $1.2 million Department of Justice grant, the new system is designed to offer realtime gang information to cops, FBI agents, and prison officials, and it allows officers on the street to enter data from across the state.

Not everyone’s a fan; as one commenter on the Boston Globe article wrote, with more passion than grammar, “Its comforting to see that the police are discovering the newfangled technology thing called the ‘COMPUTER’ at last. have they been using pencils and paper all this time? That they are just NOW doing this is PITIFUL.”

Other police departments are moving beyond mere internal resources, hoping to both better provide their information to the public and get help from witnesses.

London’s Metropolitan Police, for instance, this summer rolled out a nifty mashup using Google Maps and the department’s own crime data. Rates of burglary, robbery, and vehicle crime are superimposed on a map of London; as visitors drill down from the borough to the ward to the sub-ward, the map presents more granular information about crime in the area.

Ars contributor and London resident Peter Bright assures us that crime in his neighborhood is “average,” though a lack of muggings has so far not freed him up to write the increasingly-mythical “Part IV” in his popular series of Windows/Mac articles.

But it’s the Toronto police who have recently unveiled one of the more interesting web 2.0-style experiments The department has thrown all of its homicide information online, including both current cases and cold cases. The pages include writeups on each case, along with media from the case such as maps, pictures of crime scenes, and even YouTube pleas from detectives and victims’ families. Each pages includes a form for submitting any additional tips about the cases.

Cold cases

But technology isn’t just for the cops; those wanting to beat the heat have also turned to web 2.0 for tools like the “speedtrap mashup,” a user-generated map of police speed traps across the US. An iPhone version is in the works.

Perhaps it’s time for someone to rewrite Raskolnikov’s story. How might a poor student living in overheated garret apartment commit his crime today… and how would the police track him down?

21 July, 2007

According to PHYSORG.com, “[...] police in Canada are turning to an unusual candidate pool for crime fighters: the virtual world of Second Life.

“Policing has to reflect society, and as technology becomes more pervasive in society, we have to make sure that officers we hire are familiar with the technology,” said Inspector Kevin McQuiggin, head of the Vancouver Police Department’s technology crimes unit.

“Anyone we meet online, by virtue of being on Second Life, likely has an interest in cutting-edge technology or is comfortable with technology … and could make an excellent candidate,” he told AFP.

Second Life, created by Linden Lab in 2003, is one of the most popular digital virtual worlds on the World Wide Web, with more than eight million users worldwide.

Hoping to attract technology-savvy candidates to their unit, the Vancouver cops created online personas or avatars with the help of local university students, and held their first recruiting session on Second Life in June.

A second session is planned by year-end, said McQuiggin, whose team is responsible for computer forensics, investigating harassment by text messages, child porn cases, financial crime, decrypting cell-phone calls of organized crime rings and so on.

Last year, the unit was involved in 18 out of 19 homicides in Vancouver on Canada’s Pacific Coast, scanning computers, cell phones and handheld e-mail devices.

In most ways, the Vancouver Police Department’s June online session mirrored a real-life recruiting session: explaining the force’s selection process, training and job opportunities, he said.

However, the veteran cops found themselves in a virtual world surrounded by 30 avatars with spiked hair, wings and mercenary accouterments.

McQuiggin said recruiters should try to ignore some of the outlandish costumes worn in Second Life. One man reportedly attended another virtual job fair as a female avatar named Dragon while another appeared as a teddy bear.

“The interactivity in Second Life is really neat,” McQuiggin said.

But the avatars can be tricky to maneuver. One job-seeker told the daily Globe and Mail he accidentally presented a recruiter with a beer online, instead of a resume.

And unintentionally sending your avatar hurtling into a wall could spoil that crucial first impression. Of course, with the virtual environment being new to employers too, most are understanding of such gaffes.

According to reports, a growing number of organizations are turning to virtual online communities to find employees for real-life positions, because of their global reach.

In May, TMP Worldwide Advertising & Communications held its first virtual job fair, attracting hundreds of applicants.

Hewlett-Packard, Verizon and Microsoft are also purportedly experimenting with online hiring.

After its first virtual session, the Vancouver Police Department received three applications from Second Life users, including one from Italy, McQuiggin said.

“He had planned to vacation in Canada and decided he’d like to meet with us next week,” he said.

Candidates must still be vetted and interviewed the old-fashioned way, he said.

“We weren’t looking to establish a police station or conduct investigations on Second Life,” McQuiggin said.”

Source: PHYSORG.com

By John Timmer | Published: September 18, 2008 – 09:45PM CT

The US court system may still be trying to sort out how many of the legal protections offered to the press apply to bloggers, but many countries are leaving little doubt that their laws do indeed apply to bloggers. Unfortunately, these tend to be the countries with significant legal restrictions on the press. A couple of bloggers have found themselves faced with prison sentences recently, although the news wasn’t entirely bleak, as a Moroccan writer had his sentence quashed on appeal.

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Prosecutors dropped charges on Friday morning, as expected, against the bicyclist who was shoved off his bike in July by a police officer in Times Square. The confrontation between the cyclist, Christopher Long, and a New York City police officer, Patrick Pogan, was captured on amateur video and circulated widely over the Internet.

Mr. Long, 29, had been charged with assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct on July 25 after Officer Pogan wrote in his report that Mr. Long had been weaving in and out of traffic and that he had tried to hit the officer with his bicycle.

But video recorded by an onlooker soon surfaced on YouTube, showing Officer Pogan lowering his shoulder and shoving Mr. Long off his bike on Seventh Avenue at 46th Street as Mr. Long tried to steer out of the way. (Officer Pogan was stripped of his badge and gun and placed on desk duty pending the completion of an investigation into his conduct.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ]

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