Social Media An Unlikely Guardian Angel

The announcement last week of Facebook’s collaboration with US Police to solve missing person cases felt like a huge leap forward for communities and their capacity to benefit from social media.

Facebook and the US police have launched “Amber Alerts” where Facebook will issue police sanctioned notifications containing information about missing children and potential abductors. These alerts will be directed to the news feeds of users in appropriate locales. Facebook members would also be able to link to relevant information at the website of the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. The amber alert idea has been around for almost 18 years via radio, missing person signs and finally internet posts, so the use of social media to broadcast these alerts seems strangely belated.

The social media gurus at Duval Freelance have often expressed surprise that the police and other security enforcement agencies have not been quicker to utilise social media as a crime fighting weapon. Most people have witnessed the astounding viral potential of You Tube and Facebook. Anyone who regularly uses social media understands that the emotive nature of missing persons will inevitably receive a lot of attention. The sheer speed and reach of information flow could be a game changer for cases relying on help from a wider community, and it is almost remiss that it has taken this long for our protection agencies to cotton on.

In 2013, 3 News reported that the New Zealand Police’s use of social media (particularly Facebook and Twitter) has helped solve crime, predict possible transport disruptions and recruit new officers. However, much of their strategy has relied upon users liking, then interacting with the NZ Police Facebook page, which can be random at best. They also use Signal, a scanning tool which finds keywords to alert police to a potentially dangerous public event.The US are significantly pushing ethical boundaries with their approach. Interestingly, the Department of Justice allows law enforcement to create fake social media profiles to facilitate tracking of suspects.

Privacy issues ensure that police will not have unrestricted access to Facebook user’s information but there was a precedent set in 2012, when police investigating a Wellington murder successfully enlisted the help of the United States Government to order Facebook to hand over the personal pages of suspects. Unfortunately, it can all feel a bit Big Brother, and the realisation that our private communications are so easily manipulated always feels slightly uncomfortable, and public resistance thrives.

One of our favourite sayings at Duval Freelance is that no business is too boring for social media, and this illustrates our point beautifully. It may have been hard for government agencies such as police or health boards to see a place for social media in their formal and often sobering world but the potential benefits are too great to ignore any longer.

Melanie Duval-Smith is a writer and social media consultant and works in Tauranga and Auckland at Duval Freelance.

ENDS

© Scoop Media