Entries Tagged "crowdsourcing"

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Bank Robber Hires Accomplices on Craigslist

Now this is clever:

“I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour,” said Mike, who saw a Craigslist ad last week looking for workers for a road maintenance project in Monroe.

He said he inquired and was e-mailed back with instructions to meet near the Bank of America in Monroe at 11 a.m. Tuesday. He also was told to wear certain work clothing.

“Yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask…and, if possible, a blue shirt,” he said.

Mike showed up along with about a dozen other men dressed like him, but there was no contractor and no road work to be done. He thought they had been stood up until he heard about the bank robbery and the suspect who wore the same attire.

EDITED TO ADD (11/7): He was arrested.

Posted on October 2, 2008 at 12:18 PM •

Now Everyone Gets to Watch the Cameras

From The Times:

Residents of a trendy London neighbourhood are to become the first in Britain to receive “Asbo TV”—television beamed live to their homes from CCTV cameras on the surrounding streets.

As part of the £12m scheme funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, residents of Shoreditch in the East End will also be able to compare characters they see behaving suspiciously with an on-screen “rogues’ gallery” of local recipients of anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos).

Viewers will then be able to use an anonymous e-mail tip-off system to report to the police anyone they see breaching an Asbo or committing a crime.

Someone knows what the deal is here:

“The CCTV element is part curiosity, like a 21st-century version of Big Brother, and partly about security,” said Atul Hatwell, of the Shoreditch Digital Bridge project.

Certainly this kind of system can be abused, but my guess is that worrying about this is kind of silly:

Andrew Duff, a Conservative councillor, raised concerns about the system being adopted by burglars to check unoccupied properties. “It could be used by dishonest people as well,” he said.

My guess is that this sort of system will reduce the crime rate, as criminals move to neighborhoods without these sorts of systems. But once everyone has this sort of system, criminals will adapt and the crime rate will return to its original rate.

Meanwhile, everybody loses more privacy.

Posted on January 11, 2006 at 7:55 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.