While social media has been hailed repeatedly as a tool for revolutionaries to use to organize and communicate in places like the Middle East, the Vancouver riots are proving that social media to be just as helpful to authorities to identify and track down people involved in riots, uprisings, violent protests, looting etc.
Last night, while the riots were still taking place, someone set up a Tumblr where people could anonymously identify rioters in pictures and videos the Tumblr user running it posted to it.
If you can identify someone, please email the Vancouver Police Department or CrimeStoppers with the information (and photo). If you don’t want to contact them yourself, I would be happy to do it for you. Please feel free to drop me a message on here indicating the picture and the individual (preferably with proof, ie. Facebook or other profile).
A number of them have already been identified, like this moron who bragged about his exploits on Facebook…
There’s also been a Facebook page and a website set up that’s essentially allowing people to do the same thing: Identify people in the slew of pictures and videos that have been posted on the web in the past few hours.
Why couldn’t all of those people have just taken to the street to dance like these girls…
Life is way too short, man.