Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’
Social Media and Biometric Software Could Make Future Undercover Policing Impossible
We’ve seen how easily biometrics can be used to identify people based on their Internet photos, using something as . Cops themselves are using this technology to — so why wouldn’t intrepid motorcycle gang leaders do the same?
The Australian Federal Police is researching how social media may impact covert ops. In a survey last winter, they found the vast majority of law enforcement officers were using social media — 90 percent of females and 81 percent of males, with Facebook and Twitter the top two sites, respectively. Nearly half of those surveyed said they used the sites daily, while another 24 percent used them weekly, according to .
The worst news, from a cop’s perspective: “All respondents aged 26 years or younger had uploaded photos of themselves onto the Internet,” ComputerWorld reports. And 85 percent of respondents said someone else had uploaded photos of them. What’s more, 42 percent of respondents said they could identify someone based on his or her social media relationships, ComputerWorld says.
“The 16-year-olds of today who might become officers in the future have already been exposed,” Mick Keelty, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner, said at a security conference in Sydney.
This covers Australia, not the U.S., but it’s reasonable to expect the numbers would be somewhat similar in this country. If so, that means the next generation of undercover agents may have to go to even greater extremes to win the trust of the groups they’re trying to infiltrate. It can already take several years to do this. Maybe future cops should adopt the adage used by aspiring politicians: Decide at age 5 and act accordingly.
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U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron Wants a Master Kill-Switch for Social Networks
In to other members of Parliament (MPs), Cameron let loose with this bit of totalitarian wisdom:
"Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."
That was about all the detail Cameron gave, so, as noted, we don't know how he might approach the task of shutting down Twitter's, Facebook's, and BlackBerry's U.K. services--though of course it is possible. Several Middle Eastern nations, including the United Arab Emirates, have in the past blocked BlackBerry from operating on their soil. But for the U.K. to even think about such a step, and to express it in such a high-profile speech, is a bit shocking.
Shutting down social networks is not an unfamiliar approach--we saw it in a more severe form in Egypt, when the government in an effort to quell protests mostly by stymying the use of Facebook and Twitter as protest coordination tools. (That didn't last, of course, and Egyptian Internet services went back online ) But it ignores that social media is also being used en masse for beneficial coordination, like the 20,000-person-strong . That's not even to mention the "Supporting the Met Police against the London rioters" page, which nearly a million Likes. It remains to be seen whether Cameron and the police forces will actually pursue this line of inquiry. In the meantime, authorities are using the country's of CCTV cameras (one for every 14 people!) to identify looters.
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NYPD Creates Facebook-Police Task Force to Mine Social Media for Clues
The department has put one of its more tech savvy officers (he’s previously had success catching sexual predators and monitoring for gang activity on the Tubes) in charge of this new juvenile justice unit, which will mine Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and other social sites for signs of impending mayhem or bragging about past lawbreaking.
It’s an appropriate week to implement something like this. As I write this, rioters in the UK are using social media to coordinate their chaos and warn other rioters about police actions. And police are using social media to figure out where the rioters are headed next.
Such use of technology has been used by the NYPD specifically in the past to track down everything from unruly house parties to murder suspects, so the tactic isn’t really new. But the institutionalization of a dedicated police unit to patrol social networks marks a shift in priorities and in the value the NYPD places on this kind of policing. So is it Big Brother or sound police practice? That probably depends on which side of the law you are on. Guess it’s time we pulled down the video of our editors popping off firecrackers somewhere in the greater NYC area, lest we finally have to own up to the act.
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Utah Man Posts Facebook Updates During SWAT Standoff, Gets Help From Online Friends
One Facebook user warned Jason Valdez that a SWAT officer was hiding in the bushes outside the motel room where he was holed up with a hostage.
“Thank you homie,” Valdez replied. “Good looking out.”
Valdez, 36, is in critical condition after shooting himself in the chest as SWAT officers stormed his hotel room, according to the AP.
Valdez was charged with drug possession back in March, and a judge issued a warrant for his arrest when he didn’t show up for court June 1. Police tried to serve him with a felony drug warrant Friday afternoon, and he barricaded himself inside the Western Colony Inn in Ogden, AP said. He said he was with a woman named Veronica, who police described as a hostage.
His first Facebook post, updated at 11:23 p.m. Friday, reads in part: “I'm currently in a standoff ... kinda ugly, but ready for whatever. I love u guyz and if I don't make it out of here alive that I'm in a better place and u were all great friends.”
In all, he posted six updates, including pictures of himself and Veronica. He received more than 100 comments from family and friends, many of whom pleaded with him to “do the right thing,” AP notes. Others offered words of support, even “liking” his update about shooting at police. Click through to the for a full re-telling of the tale.
Now the police are debating whether to charge any of his friends with obstruction of justice for hampering a police investigation. His friends' responses, including words of support and details about the scene, gave him an advantage, police said.
This could be a new realm for law enforcement and attorneys — how do you file charges for activity that happened in an online setting?
"We're not sure yet how to deal with it," said Ogden Lt. Danielle Croyle.
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Pakistani Twitter User Inadvertently Live-Tweets Bin Laden Assassination
Pakistan-based IT consultant Sohaib Athar noticed a helicopter hovering over Abbottabad around 1 a.m. local time, and noted this was a “rare event.” Then a “window-shaking bang,” and news that a helicopter had crashed.
At first he tries to guess at what happened — maybe a drone was involved, maybe it was a UFO. But as the news slowly emerges, Athar realizes the enormity of what he had tweeted.
“Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it,” he wrote. Moments later: “And here come the mails from the mainstream media ... *sigh*”
His timeline of events seems to match official reports of what took place yesterday, as a Navy SEAL strike team raided a compound where bin Laden was hiding. Four helicopters were involved and one was apparently damaged by enemy fire, according to various accounts.
Athar's gives an interesting glimpse into the action, the fallout as the news spreads through the affluent Islamabad suburb, and of the exhaustion caused by Athar's unwitting historical commentary.
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Google Latitude iPhone app will help you stalk your friends
After last week, Google’s official Latitude iPhone app is , the this morning.
Google as a way to easily keep track of your friends’ locations in real-time. Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian users have been able to take advantage of the service for some time with background updating, which automatically updates their Latitude location. Now with an official app, combined with , iPhone users, too, will be able to take advantage of all Latitude has to offer.
Apple blocked Google’s first attempt at releasing a Latitude app last year (Google said Apple was worried users would confuse it with the Maps app), so that let users manually update their locations. Being a web app, it couldn’t offer the convenient background updating feature found on other platforms.
Latitude is the second rejected Google service to get an official iPhone app in the past month. Apple , after . Google after Apple’s rejection, but just like Latitude, it was no replacement for a native app. Apple’s change of heart can be traced back to .
I’ve only had a short while to dig into the Latitude app, but it seems pretty straightforward. You can view a map of all of your friends’ locations, change privacy settings and invite more friends to Latitude. The background location updating seems to work just fine, and it can also be turned off easily. Now that Latitude is fully functional on the iPhone, I’ll definitely be inviting more friends (who don’t mind being stalked) to use the service.
Google says that there are over 9 million Latitude users on other mobile platforms. I expect that number to explode now that iPhone users can take full advantage of it.
The Latitude app requires iPhone OS 4 and is compatible with the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad and the 3rd/4th generation iPod Touch. You can view a video demonstration of the app below:
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Justin.tv claims “frame reinsertion” will cross the quality gap in mobile live video streaming
Live video streaming site today announced an update that includes what it has dubbed “Frame Reinsertion,” which will allow users to upload the full resolution version of a video in the background, even as the video is being broadcast live.
Justin.tv lets users stream content live to the internet, whether it is from their webcams, mobile phones or wired in from a TV. Its competitors include , and .
It is currently available on and smartphones. It has 3.6 million total mobile application installs, with 20 percent of JTV users using mobile apps and 27,000 hours of mobile video since their launch of mobile apps in September.
Justin.tv says its new update means that the archive version is only constrained by the capabilities of the device, so that no matter what the network conditions, the archive version of the video will be very high quality.
Live streaming has become a particularly popular form of media consumption, with this year when compared to 2009.
The company via a consumer-driven “ model” for live streaming over the last eight months or so, a decision which led in October of this year.
The broadcasting quality of live video via mobile device has always been constrained by the network conditions during broadcast, with broadcasters automatically adjusting for any given network conditions during broadcast. That means that when broadcast over 3G or WiFi, the quality can be very good, but when broadcast over slower networks like slower networks like , users can often be frustrated by the speed and quality of their downloads.
But the San Francisco-based startup says it has now crossed that gap in quality — after it realized that 90 percent or more of their video views were post-live, archive views, not live viewing.
That was the key they said they needed to make it easier for them to reconfigure their app to stream content more smoothly and at a much higher quality than it had before.
“Quality has always been a major stumbling block for mobile live video, and something that is holding the technology back from broader adoption,” , vice president of marketing and communications told VentureBeat. “But now we really feel like we’ve cracked the code on this.”
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