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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."
People care about hockey? And enough to riot?
Different people, different worries
Facebook's greatest value to humanity may be as a honeypot to stupid people who post their misdeeds for all the public (and law enforcement agencies) to see.
Really? Really?! Did you even see a single picture from the mayhem? There was so much property damage only because the police was too busy saving people from mob beat downs!
Drop your stupid dogmatic devotion to your specific "ism", get your head out of your ass and actually look at the world around you as it is once in a while.
This is not a case of CCTV. Rather, these images have been submitted from mobile devices and cameras.
This is not a case of privacy invasion. People have committed criminal acts out in public, fully knowing that people are filming. They're begging to be identified.
Furthermore, the police did not set up these facebook pages; these are set up by concerned citizens who are appalled by the behaviour seen last night. The police have set up a system for submitting evidence, but they have not started a "crowd-sourced" identification initiative as of yet. So maybe the police is doing crowd-sourced evidence gathering, but certainly not analysis.
I want to point out how the police behaved in this riot. They stood their ground, but did not use an unnecessary force. They rarely engaged directly with the rioters; they just held a line, and occasionally fired tear gas, flashbangs, and pepperspray into the crowd. This is one recent case of police in the news NOT confiscating/breaking everyone's recording devices.
I think the Vancouver police and the RCMP deserve some commendation for how they handled this riot. They did not prevent as much property damage as they could have, but on the otherhand, they took a far more measured approach to interaction with the rioters than has been taken in the past and they are seemingly embracing social media, rather than raging in fear of it.
Before you comment, perhaps you'd like to do some research and educate yourself. Here: http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=369127
Coles Notes: 150 people injured, some quite seriously. Millions of dollars in damage, which tax payers and insurance payers (translation: the populace - you know, the people who are working together now to help find the criminals) will have to pay for. Perpetrated not by a crowd going insane over the angst of a lost hockey game but by anarchists and professional criminals taking advantage of a large crowd of people which could provide cover for their activities while blame was placed on the hockey fans rather than the criminals perpetrating the crimes.
Forgive me if I disagree with you, strongly, and am very happy to see initiatives like this to catch the criminals and happier still to know that the hockey fans often stepped in to try to hold back the criminals from their desired goals.
Wow, how do you mange to sound more like a dick with each word you write?
You realize this isn't some vigilante man hunt, right? It's just people looking at pics of crimes in progress and seeing if they recognize anyone. If they do, they report them to the police and let justice take its course.
As to this:
"At least rioters are just violent pricks and adrenaline-fueled idiots; you guys sound like the sort of vengeful, soulless libertarians who would shoot a man rather than let him walk away with your TV"
I don't even know what to say. People smashing property for no reason are worse than people trying to defend their own property. Go fuck yourself.
What are you even talking about? First, these are all videos citizens recorded of crimes happening in front of their eyes in public streets. None of this is coming from the police. If someone is identified, a police expert will evaluate that. If it looks like a match, they'll press charges. If there's enough evidence to convince a judge, they'll be prosecuted. Do you think we run our justice system with some facebook/hot-or-not hybrid? Wow.
Vancouver housing prices weren't the cause of the riot. Neither were disaffected youth angry about the cost of living.
While the housing market is grossly overinflated, the rental market is sane. Young people simply rent instead of buying, and rent quite nice places too because the main driver of inflating housing costs are foreign investors buying up all the condo stock. Metro Vancouver's unemployment rate (7.6%) is lower than Canada's overall, and has been pretty constant for the last decade. There's no large, pent up reservoir of anger.
The cause of the riots was 1) corralling 100,000 fans downtown to watch the game on outdoor screens, and 2) a large portion of those fans being drunk suburban kids looking to get their riot on. Blame lackluster police presence if you want. It was hooliganism pure and simple. Look at the photos. Look at their expensive shoes. Those Canucks jerseys they're all wearing aren't cheap. They're young, middle-class drunks having fun.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Disclosure: Dad was the arson inspector for my old home town.
Not a poor arsonist, just unfamiliar.
Put just one sheet of newspaper, crumpled into a ball and ignited, under the seat.
One pound of foam rubber seat cushion is equal to one pound of gasoline. The car will burn completely down to the frame, the rims will melt, and there will be absolutely no evidence of how it was done. That's because the ashes of the paper will either be obliterated by the firefighting water, or the air turbulence of the fire itself.
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Vancouver housing prices weren't the cause of the riot. Neither were disaffected youth angry about the cost of living.
While the housing market is grossly overinflated, the rental market is sane. Young people simply rent instead of buying, and rent quite nice places too because the main driver of inflating housing costs are foreign investors buying up all the condo stock. Metro Vancouver's unemployment rate (7.6%) is lower than Canada's overall, and has been pretty constant for the last decade. There's no large, pent up reservoir of anger.
Employment rate is not always the best indicator as people are often underemployed. The common term is the "working poor" and it is well documented:
"""" Seth Klein with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says that's because a lot of British Columbians make very low wages. "They can't make ends meet. They're faced with terrible trade-offs between paying the rent, feeding the kids, or heating the house." """
- http://www.news1130.com/news/local/article/241285--bc-has-highest-child-poverty-rate-of-all-canadian-provinces
""" The poverty rate for people of all ages in BC also rose to 12 percent. It was the highest overall poverty rate of any province for the 11th consecutive year. """
- http://mostlywater.org/bcs_poverty_rate_still_highest_canada
""" Despite the manipulation of statistics by various government agencies, more people are hungry in this country and in this province than we have seen for a long time. Food banks are multiplying, each one reporting that there is not enough in contributions to meet the need. It is reported that 700,000 people in Canada rely on food banks to feed themselves and their families... The fact is that the majority of the poor in Canada and in British Columbia are working. """
- http://www2.canada.com/oceansidestar/news/story.html?id=418878d9-429c-4361-acf5-c06f05079302
Also, I'm not sure how renting from foreigners who are driving up and/or controlling condo prices contributes to peace of mind.
I should clarify; around slashdot, we're awfully big on civil liberties, personal privacy and libertarianism (Hey, government, stay out of my business!). That said, we don't spend nearly enough time on civic duty. Civic duty and civil liberties are inextricably linked: a society will remain well ordered if either, there are no civil liberties and no civic duty, or there are lots of civil liberties, but they come at a price: that of civic duty.
Consequently, if you want the government to stay out of your life, you owe your society the duty of reporting it if your neighbor steals from the convenience store while you're watching. The police will follow up on the allegations, do their own investigation, and they may ask you to testify. But that's the price of civic liberties.
I don't dispute the problems with poverty in Vancouver. I see it every day. My wife teaches at a high school in Whalley, Surrey. I go through Chinatown a couple days a week.
What I'm disputing is that the riot was caused by social unrest. The pictures tell an obvious tale: half the crowd is wearing expensive Canucks jerseys and have nice haircuts. The ones who've been identified from the photos are rich kids from the burbs. If you see sunglasses, they're expensive designer sunglasses. This was hooliganism, not the poor rising up.
Foreign investment in real estate is a mixed blessing. It drives up prices, preventing the poor and the young from owning property, but it also gluts the rental market driving rental prices down. A common complaint among investors is that they're unable to finance the purchase solely by renting it out. The only unambiguously good thing is that the demand for more condos allows the city to require an apportionment of new construction to go for social housing.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Next time, you should do it by going out on the streets and punching in the face every idiot who tries to set a car on fire or break a shop window. Then there won't be a need to clean the streets up next morning.
(but yeah, taking a photo first is a good idea anyway)
There was a video played on CBC TV this morning, submitted by a spectator, presented without commentary due to its shocking nature:
A (rather large) man trying to prevent looting of The Bay on Georgia Street getting swarmed and getting the snot kicked out of him for his efforts. Final frame is him motionless on the street.
I sympathize with your initial reaction, but it's definitely not a wise one. Much better to get pic's of criminal acts, then casually FOLLOW perpetrators, getting further pictures a block away when the face mask is down. Should be easy to remain unnoticed due to the crowds & number of cameras.
Let me get this straight.
You're glorifying and condoning destruction of property, violence and cheering for more violence and senseless destruction. You're also using "mob energy" and "excitement" as justification for said senseless destruction and violence.
All because you think the city you're living in is a bit dull. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Eat the rich.