Police to troll social media in the future to predict crime

Police to troll social media in the future to predict crime

Thursday, December 30, 2010

By Shannon Proudfoot, Postmedia News

Future police forces may comb through social-media websites for potential trouble spots in their communities, according to a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank.

Photographed by:
Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images

Future police forces may comb through social-media websites for potential trouble spots in their communities, according to a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank.

The World Future Society, which tracks trends, has released its annual report of the most tantalizing forecasts for 2011 and beyond.

This year's report includes a Washington-area futurist, who says social media will play a big role in future law enforcement.

Eric Meade, vice-president of the Institute for Alternative Futures based in Alexandria, Virginia, sees potential in the next few years for police forces to sift through the vast trove of information people post on social media sites looking for digital "tripwires" that suggest problems on the horizon, similar to Google's Flu Tracker, following seasonal outbreaks based on symptom searches.

"If we were really engaged with communities through these social media, especially highly vulnerable communities where crime and other social ills are more prevalent, we could map those dynamics like you would with the flu," he says.

"What are the tensions within the community, what are the key words that tend to anticipate violence or a riot or gang-related activity? Where does an argument among kids go from being an argument among kids to a gunfight in the streets?"

Public-health agencies are already working with various data sources to track determinants of health, such as education, obesity and nutrition, Meade says. He predicts that within five or 10 years, it will be common for police forces to use the enormous cache of social media data to better understand their communities and the problems in them.

Aside from prevention, the increasing dominance of social media in our everyday lives — especially among young people — suggests it could also be used as a lever for punishment in future law enforcement through a sort of digital house arrest, he says.

"Right now, we take away people's physical freedom and we throw them in jail. If people value their virtual freedom, then it seems reasonable that could be something we take away as well," Meade says.

via vancouversun.com

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