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Spy makes it easy for authorities to monitor social media in disasters
By WDavidStephenson | November 30, 2008
Spy is yet another app in the ever-expanding ecosystem spawned by Twitter (and to think that critics such as I used to pooh-pooh 140-character messages as of little importance… mea culpa, mea maxima culpa), and it makes it possible for authorities in crises such as the Mumbai attacks to monitor social media including Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, blog comments (from BackType), Yahoo News, blogs, and Google Reader.
As I’ve said countless times before (and this situation underscored), in natural disasters and terrorist attacks, people can and will use the Web 2.0 apps. and sophisticated mobile devices that they use every day, so it’s incumbent on authorities to:
- instruct us on how to use these devices (especially camera and videophones) to provide invaluable situational awareness to them (LET ME KNOW IF YOUR LOCAL AUTHORITIES HAVE GIVEN YOU ANY GUIDANCE ON THIS ISSUE. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME: I’M NOT HOLDING MY BREATH WAITING FOR EXAMPLES…)
- monitor the social media for said situational awareness.
Ben Hedrington (thanks Ben!) has taken care of the mechanics of #2 by creating Spy. So what’s your excuse, government agencies, for not taking action on this vital concern?
Technorati tags: homeland security networked homeland security homeland security 2.0 War on Terror terrorism antiterrorism Al-Qaeda crowd-sourcing wisdom of crowds crowdsourcing smart mobs swarm intelligence emergent behavior mobile social networks Mumbai India collaboration Ben Hedrington social media Twitter Web 2.0 cameraphone
Topics: empowering public, technology, policy and politics, collaboration, e-gov transformation, networked security | |
