Slashdot Mirror
Using Crowdsourcing To Identify Vancouver Rioters
Fudge Factor 3000 writes "The Canucks' loss in the last game of the Stanley Cup Finals resulted in complete mayhem in downtown Vancouver. Everything from upturned cars set alight to looting was commonplace. Unfortunately, most of the perpetrators were able to maintain their anonymity by disappearing into the crowds. Fortunately, bystanders took several pictures and videos of the carnage. Now, websites (including both Facebook and Tumblr) have set up pages to use crowdsourcing to identify the hooligans."
This sounds like a really bad idea to me. How about giving the photos to the police?
Who will verify the images are authentic, and not photoshopped to insert other people - enemies, friends (ha ha!), famous people?
Who will make the fine judgements of what the people in the images are doing? Are they committing a crime, merely in the vicinity, or passing through? Or, how close are they to the burning car behind them? -- depth in photos is hard to judge. And what constitutes a crime in Vancouver? If the mob makes the judgement, you can bet that they will leap to wild, sensational conclusions.
What will happen to the people who are 'convicted' by this court? Will they get carefully considered justice, or a senseless angry mob? Will they be endlessly vilified and hounded, people finding their personal address online, ringing their doorbell, calling their employer, their family, etc. ... and for a misdemeanor, or a misunderstanding?
Finally, it sets the precedent that all our public activity is subject to being recorded and publicized. You can argue that we don't have a right right to privacy on a public street, but if we only have privacy in lead-shielded basement, with no communication or anything else passing in or out, we really don't have privacy at all.