People will upload anything to YouTube. From the most mundane (read: boring) daily activities, to artistic and sublime studies of the human condition. But among all the high school students on YouTube posting videos about how much they love American Idol (or whatever), you will also find hardened criminals taunting victims and police.
But more and more, police have been using YouTube as an online tool to round up suspected criminals. Consider the recent case of the two Miami gang members who uploaded a video holding assault rifles and threatening the police.
Florida’s First Coast News is reporting that the malicious video (which has now removed from YouTube) led to the two amateur video makers being arrested by the Metro-Dade gang unit, charged with making threats against police officers and weapons violations.
This is just another example of YouTube and other user-contributed websites being used by law enforcement to apprehend criminals, a trend that is expected to grow as more and more web surfers upload the (sometimes illegal) details of their day-to-day life.
Police have also used YouTube to identify drug dealers and other criminals, based on the content of their uploaded videos, and sometimes they reveal more sinister intentions, such as random acts of public violence.
For example, Norwegian police recently closed a public school and arrested a student who uploaded a video threatening to kill several fellow students and teachers. In this case, the police took the threat very seriously and apprehended the boy within 24 hours of the video being reported.
All of this raises the question of what kind of privacy (if any) the average person can expect when participating in social networking and user-content websites. It appears that these days, anyone who is involved at all online, becomes a public figure, and effectively forfeits their right to privacy.
Of course, no one is forcing individuals to be a part of these online communities, but increasingly, those who do not take part feel “left out,” as the popularity of these sites continues to grow. This can be particularly troublesome to younger users and students during those awkward teenage years when popularity seems the most important thing in the world.
Overall, it’s probably a good thing that police and other officials are taking advantage of YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook and other sites to apprehend criminals. But the lesson of these new sites is clear: don’t upload anything online you would not want everyone (including the police) to see.
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