Just watched an episode of Numb3rs, where an FBI agent solves crimes with the help of his brother who is a math genius. And very often, the math prof uses math to determine the relations and connections between people.
So that got me thinking: The rise of social networking software gives police a very powerful tool to store and organize information about criminals. Criminals very seldom act alone - they have, as have all of us, a social network: Be it "business" relations with other criminals, be it family ties, be it rivalries. Having a good idea of the social network of a criminal could be very helpful to catch a fugitive. So the police would simply have to create a social network like Facebook for all the criminals they know about (since, unfortunately, the criminals can't be expected to enter the information themselves). But I guess that most of the information that would go into such a criminal network is already available in police files. The innovation (if it really is one and doesn't already exist) would be to organize and, most importantly, visualize this information in a new way.
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2 comments:
very great point. there is so much new technology coming out created by small companies and directed towards consumers, i am curious to know if institutions (especially government) institutions are taking advantages of these new and exciting technologies. My guess would be no, as these types of organizations are slow to adapt (red tape, paper work, not high prio etc...).
I would assume the CIA or FBI have computer technologies that allows them to see relationships even far apart, but i would be curious if there are as easy to update and integrate as facebook and if they data were as flexible...
There is a new social networking site as you say "for criminals" It is www.myconspace.org. Very new and voluntary, it is privately operated in the public sector. Similar in design to MySpace and others, it allows contact with security issues in place. Maybe the govenment will adapt similar issues to their own
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