Animesh Pathak's Crazy Ideas

Monday, October 03, 2005

Idea #4: Public crime reporting using cellphones

Acknowledgement: This idea is due to Prof. Gandhi Puvvada, who suggested this as a reaction to this incident.

Think of the scenario : a murder/mugging is happenning in a street in Mumbai. Normally, noone will come forward as a witness, so the police cannot book the culprit.

However, with the current ubiquity of cellphones with cameras in India, members of the public can easily and anonymously contribute to the booking of the offender.

Step 1: Take picture of act with camera phone
Step 2: Go to a well-known-website [to be launched] which hosts pictures of incidents.
Step 3: Create a "case" on the site and upload the picture.
Step 4: Done.

The site can be set up to notify the relevent police deptt and/or major news agencies upon upload of the picture. Also the site can be run by someone in the USA so that the person is out of reach of the desi hooligans.

So, what say people? As always.. your comments are eagerly awaited!

Luv and Luck,
-A