Crimefighting 2.0

New York Times' Brad Stone had a piece today featuring 3VR's CrimeDex service. The article reviews how Police and private organizations are using collaborative Web 2.0 approaches to track and fight crime. What does that mean exactly? Well if 3VR is "Google" for surveillance, then think of CrimeDex as "Facebook" for bad guys. Together the technologies make quite a pair.

From the NY Times:

CrimeDex, now owned by 3VR, a San Francisco company that makes an image recognition system for surveillance cameras, says it is used by more than 1,000 law enforcement agencies and private businesses like banks and retail chains. For a monthly fee, members can submit information, photographs and videos related to possible crimes and make comparisons with data from agencies that may be seeing similar patterns or suspects.

“It’s the digital equivalent of the old-fashioned Western sheriffs nailing a wanted poster to a tree,” Mr. Hudson said.

Some investigators swear by it. Carol Byrum, a vice president and senior investigator at Wells Fargo, said it helped prosecutors build a case against Eduard Kholstinin, a Russian national who was caught in 2007 using fabricated A.T.M. cards to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the accounts of California Wells Fargo customers.

After he was arrested in Oregon while carrying counterfeit driver’s licenses and credit cards in his car, the surveillance images that Ms. Byrum had posted to CrimeDex helped to link crimes in the two states. Mr. Kholstinin was convicted of money laundering and identity theft and is now serving a sentence in federal prison in Oregon.

3VR will be demonstrating a new and more advanced version of its CrimeDex service at the upcoming International Security Show (ISC) in Las Vegas in early April.