Ever longer arm of the law !

A recent ruling in the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal has given criminals a reason to fear inclusion in being photographed at social functions.  Pictures that appear in Facebook are now acceptable evidence of identification and can be used in prosecutions.

This case arose when a group barged into a house party uninvited and demanded money and drugs.  A fight erupted and one partygoer had his nose broken and another was stabbed in the leg.    The intruders were unknown to the victims, but a guest provided a positive identification of one to the police when she noticed his appearance in a Facebook photograph.

The case went to appeal when the convicted challenged this form of identification, but the ruling now opens the door to all forms of social media to be used as an identification base.  Many with an uneasy conscience will be trolling through their memories and trying to remember if they were ever part of friends photographs that might have appeared in Facebook.

The window of anonymity is closing.  The ever widening cctv network is enlarging the pool of street scene archives and face recognition software can now be merged with official records - such as the driving license records which contain a photograph of all holders of a driving license.   Now that social media has entered this pool - the chance of going undetected narrows sharply.

Those with criminal intent will probably become camera shy, but for most people that will be a case of closing the stable door long after the horse has bolted.  There must be few who have not attended a wedding or other social event at which pictures were taken and joyfully shown in some sort of social media, and the day is fast coming when face recognition will automatically scroll through a wide data base at the flick of a switch.

Hopefully, this may make society more law abiding.    The fear of being caught is the prime motivating factor in preventing crime but unfortunately many act first - and think later.   This will certainly make  career criminals give more thought to a disguise factor, but in reality Facebook has just become a new play on the chessboard of detection and criminality.

In this case, a new weapon will be of use in clearing up crimes that evaded detection because the means simply did not exist at that time !