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LAPD Reaches Out to Social Media and Launches a Crowd-Sourcing Tool For Gathering Photo and Video Evidence

May 6, 2014 by Maaz Khan 1 Comment

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Screen Shot 2014-05-06 at 2.22.06 PM

Recently, there was a riot in Isla Vista, California. As the investigation behind it continues, the LAPD’s decided to try something unusual in the hopes of gathering evidence; they’re initiating an online app designed for users to help out by submitting their own photos.

Where eyewitness testimony and on-site recordings used to be difficult to obtain, they are now becoming more and more common thanks to how easy it’s getting for us to carry cameras in our pockets. In an attempt to take advantage of this societal shift, the LAPD just made live a website dedicated to crowd-sourcing photos that can be used as evidence by the police themselves. This is quite the opposite of police confiscating cameras and deleting photos that we have grown accustomed to.

Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “Photography is not a crime“, this is a move that’s bound to spark controversy. The positive side of this is that the website is still in what you can call a “beta” mode, where only a few specific criminal cases are listed asking for user-uploaded photos to be used as evidence. The program itself is called the Large Emergency Event Digital Information Repository (LEEDIR), and it uses Amazon Web Hosting to ensure the bandwidth can handle the traffic.

The website itself, now online, gives you the option to send a photo anonymously or with your name; you can submit it through places like Instagram , Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Honestly, the implications of crowd-sourced evidence open up a range of possibilities and potential, but that strength is also the idea’s weakness. Considering how far photo-manipulation itself has come along, who’s to say someone won’t be wrongfully incriminated from being framed through an altered photograph? That being just one example of how much can go wrong with something like this, it’s interesting to see where this project will go. What do you guys think on the matter? This is something that I don’t see there really being a one-sided opinion on.

[LEEDIR via Engadget]

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Filed Under: news Tagged With: crime, crowd-sourcing, lapd, law, photo evidence, photography is not a crime, social media

About Maaz Khan

Maaz Khan started off teaching himself photography with a disposable Kodak camera he got for his 7th birthday. His main weapons of choice are now the 5D Mark II, and an LG G2 when mobility calls.

You can find some of his work at his website, twitter Twitter @drcon and Instagam @maazcon

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