Crowdsourcing Justice in the London Riots

Following Vancouver’s example in June, social media has once again been enlisted to help identify the rioters and looters of London’s riots last week. Scotland Yard has posted stills from surveillance cameras on their Flickr account, asking for help in identifying suspects. And independent “name-and-shame” sites have also cropped up, including one Tumblr site called “Catch a Looter”. A twist in London’s case, however, is the potential use of face recognition technology, a tool the Vancouver Police Department declined to use in their investigations. 

A Google group called “London Riots Facial Recognition”, which has since gone private following media attention, was formed in the wake of the riots, discussing using the tool Face.API, which could help identify people in photos posted on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. While Scotland Yard has not officially made use of such tools, facial recognition technologies are already being used in other fields, though generally under wraps.

As this technology is still in its foetal stages, it is definitely not foolproof. When it starts to proliferate, however, as it is already raising eyebrows now, so will the privacy concerns.