jason

Yorkregion.com - Regional News - York Crime Stoppers play wait-and-see with text messaging

Any social networking technology can be useful for public safety, when it comes to sharing or gathering information. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube all have potential, Jason Nolan, a professor in the school of early childhood education at Ryerson University said.

“This is where people already socialize and share information. And, more importantly, they pass on information to each other. This means police can get a message out to hundreds of thousands of individuals very quickly and they can target their audience; an audience they’ve always had trouble connecting with,” Mr. Nolan wrote. “However, I don’t think that people should be giving information to the police using these methods. The technology is not designed for passing secure information. I would use the phone.”

So, have the rapidly changing technological times resulted in an out-of-touch Crime Stoppers chapter in York Region?

No, according to Mr. Nolan.

“Many people are watching this sort of community outreach,” he wrote. “I think they’re watching to see how successful it is and whether it will connect them with the groups of people they can’t connect with in other ways. And I think there are lots of issues regarding privacy and data collection and ethics of putting information out publicly like the police have done that need to be sorted out.”

A disproportionate percentage of Facebook users are Canadian, so we are really breaking new ground when it comes to using these social technologies in this way, Mr. Nolan added.