Cops To Start CrimeTube To Report Offenses

An anonymous reader writes "UK citizens may soon be able to report crimes by uploading videos taken from their mobile phones. Ian Readhead, director of information for the Association of Chief Police Officers, told silicon.com that forces want to build a video reporting portal to allow the public to upload potential evidence. Checking YouTube is now a routine part of many police investigations, he said, and police want to build on the extra functionality that this gives them."

Holy crap!

[plover]

So as a subscriber, I get to see stories before TFA is slashdotted. The preview stories come with this little question: "See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor." I don't think emailing the Slashdot editors is going to fix the problems I see with this one!

TFA gives the example of a white van involved in some crime. Well, I have a neighbor whose dog barks all night, but drives a brown van. No problem, a little Photoshop here and there, and voilá! "Instant Evidence"! The neighbors dog spends 6-8 months in the kennel while his owner does the same thing.

So what are they going to do

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are they going to do when people start uploading videos en masse of the police breaking the law?

Crimes by cops?

[ShadesFox]

I think that this will be mostly used to video tape cops doing terrible things and uploading it for all to see. I also can't help but think that it will be largely ignored.

Re:So what are they going to do

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Charge them with disseminating material that might be potentially useful to terrorists, of course. Easy enough [bbc.co.uk].

Police Abuse Videos

[MasterOfMagic]

What happens when you upload a video of the police abusing a citizen (assuming you can smuggle your copy out of the situation)? Do they auto-delete or does the spin machine automatically fire up?

Re:Report on your neighbor!

[raburton]

And here is another fine example... http://jamesholden.net/billboard/ [jamesholden.net]

This nice webpage allows you to generate your own, but the ones shown are genuine ones, I've seen both these billboards around my own town, and it's not like I live in London.

CPD

[chicago_scott]

If this were Chicago the system would eventually become overwhelmed by police crimes.

Re:Holy crap!

[csartanis]

I wonder what will happen to the videos of police committing crimes?

Re:Holy crap!

[A non-mouse Coward]

Where do I upload suspected thoughtcrime?

Re:Report on your neighbor!

[Red Flayer]

How fitting, then, that the Wikipedia article of the day is the biographical article on Judge Learned Hand, who said:

[M]y friends, will you not agree that any society which begins to be doubtful of itself; in which one man looks at another and says: "He may be a traitor," in which that spirit has disappeared which says: "I will not accept that, I will not believe that--I will demand proof. I will not say of my brother that he may be a traitor," but I will say, "Produce what you have. I will judge it fairly, and if he is, he shall pay the penalties; but I will not take it on rumor. I will not take it on hearsay. I will remember that what has brought us up from savagery is a loyalty to truth, and truth cannot emerge unless it is subjected to the utmost scrutiny"--will you not agree that a society which has lost sight of that, cannot survive?

Re:Police Abuse Videos

[DaFallus]

Someone just needs to start their own YouTube style site specifically for uploading and sharing videos of police brutality, corruption, or any other type of malfeasance. You could search by city, state, names, etc and link it to Google Maps. I think the fallout of such a thing would be interesting to say the least.

Re:Holy crap!

[noidentity]

Hopefully the videos are simply used to generate leads, since as evidence there is no way to verify their authenticity. But it seems that it'd be more productive to simple have the people, you know, call on the phone to report suspicious activity. They could send a patrol to check it within the hour, rather than waiting for it to show up on YouTube.

Re:Holy crap!

[vandon]

Even better, how many videos will be deleted because they show a cop running a red light, illegally parked, littering, sleeping in their cars, making illegal turns, etc?

Wifi streaming video camera?

[onkelonkel]

Is there a such a thing as a wireless streaming video camera? Then if you happen to film the cops in some sort of dubious behavior, you can hand over the camera like a good little citizen when the cops ask for it, knowing that the video is safe on a server somewhere miles away?

Re:Holy crap!

[drinkypoo]

It's illegal in a lot of places, the state, county, or even city can make it illegal to sleep in your vehicle in their jurisdiction. That's pretty much the norm these days, and in fact in some places it's even illegal to sleep in a tent in your own back yard, although in practice this is almost never enforced... a bad law is still a bad law. It's illegal to live in a trailer on your own property in Lake County, CA unless you have plans and permits to build a house. It's hard to see how that serves society, unless you want people to be homeless. Hmm...

Police = Not a Dangerous Occupation

[onkelonkel]

I don't know how we ever got the idea that police work is particularly dangerous. (Wait...yes I do...from the police!). Police work isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous occupations. Death rate for Loggers about 95 per 100,000 per year, pilots about 90, steel workers about 50. Police are about 6 per 100,000. Only about 1/2 of the police deaths are due to encounters with violent criminals, the rest are things like traffic accidents and heart attacks. We don't condone brutality on citizens by garbage collectors, and their job is 5 times as dangerous as the police.

Orwell and Brin

[MyrddinBach]

Nothing is new under the sun...

Orwell of course predicted this type of thing but not quite in the same way. Had he lived a bit longer I'm sure he would have extrapolated emerging technologies to this sort of thing - videotaping people and sending it in.

David Brin did exactly that in his novel Earth. Before the onset of the WWW and when the internet was still in its infancy he extrapolated and predicted people wearing special glasses that could record everything. If they witnessed a crime they could then easily upload the video to the proper authorities with incredible ease.