December 19th, 2006
YouTube's most wanted
Could YouTube become a useful tool in the fight against crime? A police officer in Canada thinks so, and has posted a surveillance video onto the site in an appeal for information.
When Detective Sergeant Jorge Lasso of Hamilton, Ontario, wanted to circulate a surveillance video while investigating an apparent murder near a hip-hop club, he thought of his own children, who are in their 20s.
"They get all their news from the Internet," he said. "I realized if I was going to communicate with this demographic, we were going to have to go that way."
Has the experiment worked so far? Err, no.
After a week, YouTube had not brought the police in Hamilton any closer to finding the men.
Traditionally, such an appeal would appear on a local television station. YouTube - for all it's popularity - isn't locally targeted. And that's the problem.
Steve O'Hear is a London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, focussing on the Internet and all aspects of digital technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
