The wrong tweet can land you in the cage
Part of police work is making the most of every lead – something that British detectives are learning as they will be soon hitting the web to check Twitter.
Media reports how updated training for Britain's annual crop of 3,500 trainee detectives will recieve pointers on how to track criminals on micro-blogging site Twitter.
Alongside from keeping an eye on Twitter pages, they will also learn how to mine Facebook pages for witnesses, a spokesman for the National Policing Improvement Agency said.
"It's a way of tracking down criminals. Finding the sort of people they've contacted and the sort of groups they're a member of." He is reported as having spoke on condition of anonymity in-line with official policy.
Facebook and Twitter are both enormously popular all around the world, and online indiscretions increasingly feature in accounts of how police and prosecutors secure convictions.
It is a slow process, but as more and more people land themselves in trouble thanks to an unwittingly unsubtle tweet or ‘status update’ – or get themselves fired for mouthing off about the boss in full view of the world, it is becoming accepted that the web is far more open than many believe.
The new training, which will be available starting in January 2011, will also include information on how to gather clues from computers, cell phones and other electronic devices – highlighting how police methods are keeping up with the onset of modern technology.
