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From Crowdsourcing to Crimesourcing: The Rise of Distributed Criminality

Crowdsourcing began as a legitimate tool to leverage the wisdom of the crowds to solve complex business and scientific challenges…

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Unlawful Assembly in Virtual Spaces Now Also Illegal

Many governments around the world have criminal statutes preventing “unlawful assembly” crimes.  Generally speaking, an unlawful assembly refers to a gathering of individuals who come together in order to commit an unlawful act or to behave in a violent, boisterous or tumultuous manner.  While nations around the world differ in their tolerance of public gatherings, [...]

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When Flash Mobs Become Crime Mobs

When people think of flash mobs, they tend to focus on the positive: 300 people showing up to dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller in a London tube station,  a relatively calm Worldwide Pillow Fight Day or even an impromptu Sound of Music performance in Antwerp’s (Belgium) central rail station. Yet as the below article demonstrates, [...]

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Twittering with Life and Death: A Tweet Too Far?

When Jack Dorsey founded the Twitter micro-blogging service in 2006, he, like most business owners, was surely hoping for great success.  Now just few short years later, he clearly has arrived.  Twitter has grown from about 500,000 tweets per quarter in 2007 to more than 4 billion tweets in the first quarter of 2010.  While [...]

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Tweet the Police: San Francisco Non-Emergency Police Services Available via Twitter

As noted elsewhere on Future Crimes, law enforcement organizations throughout the world are increasingly using technology to serve the public.  Most such initial efforts were nothing more than one-way public relations activities, such as the police chief hosting a web page with his biography and photograph. During law enforcement’s initial first-generation foray onto the Internet, [...]

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