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Australian Police Ask Facebook For Police Alarm Button
littlekorea writes "The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has requested social networking site Facebook install a law enforcement representative in Australia and introduce some sort of button in which users can immediately report online crime to the police in a single click. It is National Cyber-Security Awareness Week in Australia, so the AFP is on an all-out offensive — announcing it is also investigating whether Google committed offences under Australia's Telecommunications Interception Act when it harvested Wi-Fi data." Something like this has been in the works for a while.
won't get flagrantly misused
20 ga-jillion websites in the world, why should facebook and a select few others bear the burden? Australian police want a "report crime" button on a website, put it on their own...you know, where I'd look for one...if i was looking in the first place...whatever the aussie equivalent of dialling 911 is still going to be faster than typing a report into a website...which, in the unlikely event it actually worked, would instantly generate a phone call from the police to the submitter anyway...
can't see the website button getting abused in any way, no siree...
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
What type of crimes to they believe happen (often) on Facebook? And whatever other websites they might have contacted.
I don't see how this would result in anything but meaningless spamming of that "button".
We are all God's parents.
Does Amazon know about his?
It only violates Amazon's patent if you order an online crime with one click, not report one.
We're going to report some crimes.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
I was thinking, in case a criminal had you at gunpoint and you couldn't click on something without the bad guy noticing, that they could implement a single nod system for reporting crimes.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
Misused? It's the "correct" usage that is the problem...
They (The governments, cops, the man, whatever) keep trying to lower the treshold of reporting a crime. In theory, this is a good thing: If a crime is committed against me, I might already be upset etc. and should not be forced to jump through additional hoops. However, reporting a crime is notable thing that should be carefully considered. I am not some right wing nutjob who thinks that government should never interfere and whatnot but if someone is harassing you online, you really should think carefully if there is some better way to deal with the situation than involve the cops and the justice system with all its weight! When we aren't talking about crimes that put you or someone you know in immediate danger (in which case you generally should call 911 or its equivalent, not use some online system that isn't designed for that fast response) I think that it is actually better if you are required to visit a police station, call it or at the very minium send a goddam e-mail! If the crime is so insignifcant that you can't be bothered to send an e-mail to report it, perhaps you shouldn't report it!
Think about how people use Facebook. People use it after all the major events in life (break ups, etc.), during night when they are sleep deprived, after they haven consumed alcohol... And when only communicating with text there are plenty of possibilities for misunderstanding the other party (something that was meant as a joke can be misinterpreted and so on)... We really don't need effortless one-click-crime-reporting in that enviroment.