Current Insight Community Cases

Justifying Your Datacenter Management Improvements

Essential Datacenter Tips On Application Performance Monitoring

The Importance Of Skilled Immigrants To The American Economy

Help A New Kind of Music Label Revolutionize The Industry

Mandates To Buy American Should Be More Carefully Considered

CwF + RtB

-- get "looooots of t-shirts"

Brought to you by Floor64 and the Techdirt crew.

stories filed under: "kidnapped children"
(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Kevin Donovan


Filed Under:
google maps, kidnapped children, street view



Google Street View Helps Find Kidnapped Child

from the well-who-woulda-thunk? dept

You may remember that a couple months ago an advocacy group was trying to whip up a storm about Google's Street View service. The claim alleged that child predators would use Street View to find where children live and then kidnap them. Well, it turns out that Street View did assist with a kidnapping.

Only, not as the worriers predicted.

Instead, a smart cop was able to use Street View to help relocate a kidnapped child. In fact, in conjunction with the GPS data for the child's phone, provided by the cellular provider, the officer was able to use Street View to remotely find what he thought may be a motel in Virginia. Furthering Googling confirmed Street View and local police were able to find the child. Obviously, stories like this will be far and few between -- but so will ones where bad guys use technology in an evil way. That's the reality: technology can be good or bad, it depends on the user. Luckily, in this case, we had a clever cop using technology for the best.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

40 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Popular Posts
Poll

Which Internet Concern Worries You The Most?

 

 

 

 

 

 


Add Techdirt RSS To Your Reader
rss Add Techdirt to your Bloglines
Add Techdirt to your Google Add Techdirt to your My Yahoo
Add Techdirt to your Netvibes Add Techdirt to your Newsgator
Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Older Stuff

Monday

7:49pm: The Uselessness Of Amazon's Announcement That Kindle Is Its Best Selling Product (16)
6:08pm: Facebook Photos Coming Back To Haunt Users In Surprising Ways (39)
4:45pm: French Courts Continue To Penalize eBay For Actions Of Users (12)
3:36pm: Dear Peter Mandelson... Dan Bull Sings His Opposition To Kicking People Off The Internet (13)
2:14pm: If We Don't Kick People Off The Internet For File Sharing, Football Will Die (65)
1:00pm: More ACTA Leaks; Still Looking Really Bad (15)
11:37am: Other Legal Work Slow? Start A Practice To Help Patent Trolling (14)
10:23am: One Misguided Tweet Is 'Indisputable' Evidence That Piracy Harms Movies? (63)
9:10am: Italian Prosecutors Assume Google Execs Read All YouTube Comments; Demands Jailtime Over Video (32)
7:33am: Copyright Law Changes In India Could Gut Fair Use (18)
6:00am: UK Pub Owner Fined Due To Unauthorized Downloads On Free Pub WiFi? (42)
3:57am: Suing For Patent Infringement No Replacement For Actually Building A Real Business (31)
1:46am: Mininova Deletes Most Torrents Under Court Threat (49)

Wednesday

7:37pm: Stop Wallowing And Start Doing Cool Stuff With Business Models, The Wil Wheaton Edition (32)
6:51pm: Researchers: Copying And Imitation Is Good For Society (140)
6:05pm: Steve Jobs Tells Startup Startup To Change Names, Saying 'It's No Big Deal' (70)
5:26pm: Profitable 'Pay Us Or We'll Sue You For File Sharing' Scheme About To Send 30,000 More Letters (20)
4:46pm: UK Police Arresting People Just To Add To DNA Database? (18)
4:01pm: Funny How Those In Favor Of ACTA Are Against Treaty Providing More Access To Content For Vision Impaired (6)
3:15pm: Advertising As Content: Newspaper Raising Newsstand Prices For Thanksgiving Papers With Black Friday Ads (11)
2:14pm: Are Entertainment Industry Tactics Working? (50)
1:00pm: Photographer Compares Microstock Sites To Pollution And Drug Dealing (45)
11:48am: If Movie Piracy Is Really A Problem, It's Hollywood's Fault (78)
10:27am: If Google Visitors Are Worthless, It's Only Because Newspaper Execs Don't Know What They're Doing (37)
9:01am: Multitasking Is Our Main Activity (15)
7:33am: Greed vs. Due Diligence: Another Case Of Startup Fraud? (4)
6:01am: Anti-Piracy Group In Spain Fined For Bad Faith Actions Against File Sharing Systems (13)
3:55am: ABA Journal's Patent Application To Score Interview With USPTO Boss David Kappos (18)
1:44am: Can Universities Make Sure That Drugs Based On Their Research Are Licensed Reasonably? (19)

Tuesday

9:21pm: Companies Realizing That Content Is Advertising Via Web Series (12)
More arrow
Quick Links
Close
E-mail It