Slashdot Mirror
Google Used to ID Hit-And-Run Victim
jafiwam writes "Google has been used (according to CNN) to help identify a hit-and-run victim from 1993. Detective Pat Ditter used Google to identify victim David Glen Lewis, 39 who died after being hit by a car while out of town. An image involving a fairly unique pair of glasses was found on the Texas Department of Public Safety web site, and a similar image on the Doe Network (involved in unsolved cases). This was after Det. Ditter began working on unsolved cases utilizing Google as a tool in that process. Makes you wonder how it took law enforcement that long to think of this. Process servers, employers and significant others already use Google for theses purposes... why not cops?"
that law enforcement and government agencies are finally starting to use the internet to its full potential.
But it's not a simple matter of typing in someones name and it comes up "he was killed in a hit-and-run , hit F5 to solve the case".
The cops USE Google, but they still have to be the ones that put 2 and 2 together to get a conclusion.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Last year when I was doing web work for a car dealer a state policeman happened to come into the showroom asking for assistance. He had a piece of a tailight lens and that was it. Something had hit a parked car on some private property and that piece of lens was the only evidence. When the parts department said they couldn't help I poked my head up and volunteered. This drew some sneers from the "pros" behind the counter who felt that I couldn't possibly help with anything related to cars. Anyway, using Google I narrowed it down to a specific year and model of a Ford pickup. The police were able to track down the owner - it's not that big of a town. It was fun, though it took about two hours and I got quite a headache looking at so many images.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess that puts a new meaning to Google's "Don't be evil" slogan. =)
Join the TWIT army now!
Yes, and everything you read in teh intraweb is true.
--
Slashdot: Racism against Indians OK. China bad, USA good. Blue pill in water supply.
Google makes a standalone internal search engine server called the Google Appliance. We have one in use at my current job and I was just thinking it would be neat to see what just a little bit of effort from several law enforcement agencies and one of these appliances could do.
What about facial recognition software used for this purpose? If drivers license pictures were standardized and pictures taken at the morgue were made to the same standard (assuming the face of the disceased in not injured/damaged) is facial recognition software good enough to be used to try to identify John Does?
> Google will soon be starring in TV's CSI
LoL. "CSI:Google"
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I know that a couple CSI episodes and a couple NCIS episodes used a generic looking search engine page. I don't know whether or not they'd use Google unless someone paid them to but the concept's there.
Of course, the TV search engines can tell you a person's entire life history with only a first name and a hair color. They're pretty powerful, you know...
It's only a matter of time before Google will have the new GEvader Beta system....
The masses are finally discovering google's advanced search capabilities?
Now if google could only date (date when google archived the information) the result entries....
Brought to mind a article in a previous edition of wired that I read. The story. I think this is a great use of search tools. It brings chills to my spine, the story, and the way that this man seems to be fighting with his own ghosts. Well written, and shows promise to anyone who has had to hole a memorial service for someone who couldn't be found. I hope that the police to hop on this train and use the tools that they have right in front of them. It also is great that there is a netowrk like the John Doe network of people, all looking out, trying to help these lost souls...
sig!wind down the juuice, let the tubes roar with the glow of alternative powers, not they that be." me, today...
> The police were able to track down the owner - it's not that big of a town.
I was wondering how they caught me, you jerk.
If you had a slower internet connection I might have made it across the border.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I meant PURPOSES. How tacky, to make a typo in a post mocking a typo. . .
You are not the customer.
I did, and it brought up an obscure post (circa 1996) I made to some alt.linux.* newsgroup about re-formatting Linux text files so they would be readable in Windows.
Spooky.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The story of how one Google-obsessed computer geek solves crime after crime, all the while consuming vast quantities of pizzz, snacks, soda and coffee...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The second is that Google is a private corporation and there is no guarantee that google does not the display search results that it wants displayed instead of the real ones. Just too much power in Google's hands in my mind.
_____
Thank you.
I often sneer at the fantastic search capabilities (and impeccable graphics) dramatized in the CSI shows. If only the state was so organized to have so many databases immediately on hand... and if only the software was so good. Perhaps Google is in fact one step in that direction.
Also interesting, there is a phenomenon called the "CSI effect" referring to jurors expecting capabilities similar to the tv series in real-life forensic investigations...
... can make a lot more money doing legitimate work. Seriously.
anything else being ID'd by any other 'technology' and it would've been 'Your rights online' ...
"fairly unique " ?
They can now sell a service to make yourself show up _low_ in pagerank and make the people you're trying to frame show up _high_ in pagerank.
What a great way to frame someone - just buy his name on all the terrorist keywords.
I do this all the time with problematic eBayers and Yahoo auction buyers and sellers that I run into.
I once had a guy email me and accuse me of stealing his Bang & Olufsen turntable that I was selling on ebay. He said he sold one on ebay two weeks prior to my auction and that the bidder (who happened to be 100 miles from me had made a claim that it was broken. He paid out on the claim. He accused me of being in cohorts with someone to pull a fast one and get the turntable, collect on insurance, then resell it on ebay for a double profit.
Well, I ended up googling his email address. Turns out - I got something to this affect on a "Discreet Personals Website" in Colorado:
"Male looking for other males for discreet, private meetings - into play, but nothing too rough"
I emailed him and told him I had found some information about him that I might post to eBayers That Suck dot com.
He didn't bother me after that.
I always google any problematic customer to see if they are a complainer on line or have anything "strange" about them - or are possibly on another business's hit list.
I google potential girlfriends names and if I have them, email addresses.
If you google my ID; adzoox, it brings up my website and home town of Greenville SC and things about me in the Upstate of South Carolina. Lots of google results are my slashdot posts from the past 3-4 months.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
New way of using Google to help the cops: Click me
I saw this on a TLC documentary about a year ago. This guy Patrick Critton hijacked a Canadian plane to Cuba back in 1971 and got away. The Canadian police re-opened the case, and searched for the man in all the police databases. Nothing was found. So then they did a Google search on the guys name, and lo and behold, one link from a local newspaper in Westchester County, NY had this guys name. The police went down there and sure enough, it was the same guy, over 30 years later. He had turned his life around and become a pillar in the community, mentor to young kids, etc etc.
t ml
Here's a link
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSLaw0206/11_hijacker-cp.h
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A friend of mine had his laptop stolen a few years back, and filed a police report. He setup a regional search on eBay to notify him of hits on auctions for the laptop model and make he had. Sure enough, about 6 months later, he got a hit on a laptop with the same make, model, and system specs (the picture of the item also showed a distinct scratch the laptop had).
He contacted a detective with the sheriff's office and they contacted eBay, got the seller's contact information, and ended up recovering the laptop and arresting the guy. The sad part is, the police "never thought" of watching eBay for stolen items, especially expensive things like laptops. Now, the local sheriff's department utilizes eBay's saved searches to track stolen items being sold in the metro region on eBay, and I have heard they have successfully made arrests and/or recovered stolen items in other cases as well.
There's always a chance a criminal will pursue eBay to auction off stolen items, especially because the winning bidder will often live far away, and the fact that it's hard to sell expensive stolen items locally without getting caught.
What if law enforcement could obtain logs of all the searches associated with your Google-set cookie for the past three years?
It'd also be useful data for industrial espionage types...
May we never see th
"Makes you wonder how it took law enforcement that long to think of this"
This is of little surprise to me.
If we look at the demographic that is the police, then the only saving grace is that they would probably contain a small percentage of "forward thinkers" - maybe 2-5% of their number, just as in most organisations.
Police officers often do not hold any formal qualification outside of high school, or their own training instutions.
Fundamentaly, police in the field need the ability to arrest, tackle, and subdue violent offenders. The fact is, they need special...uh...abilities, to do this. Not the ability to "think outside the square".
Later in their career they will graduate to perhaps detective. They then utilize past experiance and gain new initiative.
They would now have the opportunity and freedom(in work) to move beyond the text book.
There must be so many "old schoolers" in the police, where challenging tried and true process's requires seniority, an innovative bent, and the ability to say no to the old school.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
A 50+ year old copkiller cold case was sovled by the LAPD last year. All the homicide detectives had to do was just check the fingerprint found at the scene against the FBI's computers and they found their man.
Matching fingerprints isn't as easy as searching Google but it's pretty damn easy compared to olden days (the 80's) where the two prints were put side by side and someone had to visually compare them.
After that murder case was solved the LAPD decided to assign a group people to work on these cold cases. They have tons of physical evidence that can be matched against different databases (blood, fingerprints, DNA, etc.). All they need is the manpower to go through it.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Process servers, employers and significant others already use Google for theses purposes... why not cops?
Because police are stupid. We have judges and courts because all throughout history we can see that the people who enforce the laws are not able to do so without oversight.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This silly story is like saying, I drove my car around and found the suspect. Wow! My car solved the crime! Google zealots.
"No part number. Just a small piece of the center of the lens."
Were's the "semantic web" when you need it?
Now if only the USPTO would google for prior art.
"Police officers often do not hold any formal qualification outside of high school, or their own training instutions. "
Uh huh.
"This is of little surprise to me.
If we look at the demographic that is the [Slashdotter], then the only saving grace is that they would probably contain a small percentage of "forward thinkers" - maybe 2-5% of their number, just as in most organisations.
[Slashdotters] often do not hold any formal qualification outside of high school, or their own training instutions. "
I can make up stuff too. Welcome to slashdot.
"Because police are stupid. We have judges and courts because all throughout history we can see that the people who enforce the laws are not able to do so without oversight."
That's funny. Something similiar can be said about the public.
I googled for "underwear gnomes". Why does your name keep showing up?
... you can of course use Googlism. :-)
:-), but the second one will surely scare any employers away. :-(
Hmm, let's see...
Who is Jugalator?
1. jugalator is right
2. jugalator is starting on a dire wolverine
Well, the first one sounds correct
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
You would think with the massiave popularity of google, and its ability to geotarget so well... that it would be feesiable to see amber alerts popup when people searched from the targeted areas...
course, Amber works best by catching people driving with the kidnapped child, but still any extra coverage would be good for the victum.
When will I be able to use Google to get laid?
Not all crimes are motivated by the desire to make money.
Google CSI Miami.
Google Cold Case.
or
NYPD Google.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
"Ditter began working on unsolved cases utilizing Google as a tool in that process. Makes you wonder how it took law enforcement that long to think of this."
Actually, law enforcement has been using internet search engines as long as they have been around. Just because an occasional case manages to get some media attention, does not mean the method is anything new at all.
Keep in mind, also, that Google has reached near retardation levels of attention in the media. Anything anyone does which results in something positive could just turn up as a media-worthy article to mention Google.
Look back 6 years and you'll see the same BS with Yahoo.
I swear, if the public had any less of an attention span, people suffocate from forgetting to breath.
Does this mean disallowing google from your robots.txt is obstruction of justice?
not a tautology. an incorrect use of a word.
It's a search engine - what did you expect?
Just about every variation of the TV show Law and Order (The normal one, Special Victims Unit, and Criminal Intent) has used google in their investigative research. In fact, they've even turned it into a verb:
"I googled for bla bla bla..."
Seeing that TV usually mimics reality, I have a feeling that real cops have been using google longer than we think.
Daniel
This is necessary...life, feeds on life...
Will you people stop with the "Nothing to see here" thing? It's getting very tiring, and most of the time it doesn't mean anything.
I have been wondering about this. Earlier this year i was looking at the stats for my personal web page i set up on geocities.
For some reason i was getting all these hits from google with people typing in "tommy savage" who ran a guest house i stayed at in Amsterdam. Turns out he the law thinks he is some huge drug dealer. Shipping huge amounts of grass into Greece.
The big question is did all the cops have to do is type his name into google and up pops my website with directions on how to find him?
I hope not because incoent or guilty he looked after me when i stayed there.
Here is the website incase any of you are curious.
http://www.geocities.com/babajuma
or if you just want the bit about tommy
http://www.geocities.com/babajuma/tommy.html
They already do. Take a look at the Google-cached copy of a page, and you'll see something like "This is Google's cache of ((BLAH)) as retrieved on Sep 21, 2004 05:14:22 GMT" at the top of the page.
One problem may be the quality of the images in the driver's license database. The last time I renewed my license, they gave me one of the new computer generated licenses. The quality of the picture was horrible. It's a blurry postage stamp sized picture that vaguely looks like me.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
No, Google isn't fake. To be in CSI, everything must be as far from reality as possible, and work perfectly despite being used by idiots spewing nonsense.
I really hate that show.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
14m3.
Get out.
This article could have been "Detective Tracks Dead Through Web" or even "A9 Sees Dead People."
Remember, it doesn't have to be found via Google to be on the Web. Remember?
Geez.
Makes you wonder how it took law enforcement that long to think of this.
No, not really. I'm pretty sure the cops figured out google a while ago, all around the world. It's just that its successful use is not fucking news!
What it really makes me wonder is what on earth these guys at CNN were on when they decided to run this.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Hooray! At least *somebody* got my joke!
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I had a kid run over my dog a few years ago (like 3) and I got his license plate. The trooper I talked to could find his name and address but it was pretty far away (in the same state) and he couldn't get a phone number for him. It took me one lookup on anywho. When the cop called back I gave him the number and he was astounded that I could get it.
At least it wasn't on porpoise.
I read an interesting article a while back (linked off /.) about a mac user who tracked down an ebay scammer who ripped him off over an {i,Power}Book. The shipping address was in a city, and the city cop who he contacted was too busy to work on the case (simple mail fraud was not important enough). However, the next time the guy pulled the scam, the shipping address was out in the 'burbs and the local cop was bored (having no work) so jumped at the chance to nail a crim, put a lot of hours in, and got the guy.
So wealthy suburbs don't necessarily have a shortage of police manpower....
Posters recognized by their sig,