As I was looking for something to write about this week I came across a very interesting article on CNN's website. The title of the article was Victim Uses Facebook to Finger Suspect. This article talked about a crime that happened between students of Georgetown University. A student from the University was attacked by another student near campus one day. After the crime was committed, the victim decided to take matters into his own hands, and set out to try and find his attacker. He knew that a lot of students had facebook, which is a social networking site, and decided to look on the website to see if his attacker was a member. It turned out that his attacker was indeed a member. When he realized this he turned the information he found into this police, which helped them to catch the student who attacked him.
A police officer in this article stated that he had never heard of facebook being used to help solve crimes in his life.
I really did think that this article was very interesting. I thought it was amazing how this student had the brilliant idea to use facebook to look up his attacker. If I was ever attacked I do not think that I would have ever thought of using any social networking site to look up my attacker. Although this social media outlet was very beneficial in this case, it is a little scary to realize that all this personal information is out there on the web for pretty much anyone to see. When I thought about it, I realized that these sites do have a lot of information about people: from photos, to birthdays, to comments written to them, and even what there relationship status is. Not many people live without some type of social media outlet in today's society. I do think more times than not these types of websites offer a lot more benefits than harm, if used properly. They can be helpful in helping people keep in touch with one another, and they are a great way to connect multiple people together all at once. But, I cannot help to wonder what direction our world is headed in. Who would have ever thought, facebook, would help to solve a crime?
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2 comments:
That's crazy!, but really smart of the student. I think today, that is something high school and college students would think to do. It's the place to go to find out anything about a person...why not use it find a criminal!
I think this is a great way to utilize Facebook when it is really otherwise a waste of time. I am not saying it is bad because I am on there all the time particularly when I should'nt be. I do think that this would be a great topic for Capstone or another controversial project because it questions whether or not people have the right to use that information against somebody. I guess if they put it out there though it probably is.
--westonJ OUT
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