Last year I wrote a few posts on issues relating to capturing picture and video evidence on the Internet. My belief is that the relevance of these technologies will extend far beyond the traditional (albeit terrible) realms of child pornography and image copyright violation; and will become much more prevalent in other types of crimes.

It appears that it’s happened recently in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Yesterday a man from the area plead guilty to one count of “unlawfully advising, encouraging and promoting a prizefight” and two counts of “being present at a prizefight as an aide, second, surgeon, umpire, backer or reporter.”

According to an article in the Chronicle Herald the he lead a group calling itself “East Coast Street Fights” which organized unsanctioned fight clubs to settle disputes. The group would then post videos of the fights on Facebook and YouTube. In fact the article infers that the fights were organized on the group’s Facebook wall.

It would be interesting to learn if the police authenticated the video on the Internet from the subject’s video recording device initially or if they found the video on the Internet first and went looking for witnesses and the tool that the subject used to make the recording.

Other sources in the media indicate that the organizer received a year of probation, but interestingly a quick Google search on the group indicates that the footage is still available on line.

Steven Davis‘ book “Protecting Games” is due out in a week. His blog PlayNoEvil is always interesting so I am definitely looking forward to the book.

I always find it insightful to listen to discussions from people of different generations on how they use or think about technologies. It helps those of us involved in investigating incidents involving the Internet to think in terms of a user’s experience as opposed to our own experience.

Enter the IA Podcast. I find Jeff Park’s work around usability and information architecture interesting anyway, but I find this particular series of posts/podcasts to be very useful for those of us involved in looking at how people might use the Internet and other networking technologies to connect, conduct business or entertain themselves; and how those activities might be used in the cause, prevention or investigation of crime/civil incidents.

During the first part of Park’s series called “Generations and Technology” he interviews a Grade 6 class about the technologies they use and how they think about them. The interview is informal, entertaining and very insightful, especially if you don’t have younger kids around that would expose you to this kind of human-technology interaction. For example: “instant Messenger is boring…” was one of my favourite quotes.

I’m looking forward to the next session in the series where he interviews high school students.

This brings me to another noteworthy item from this week. Toronto Constable Scott Mills has earned a reputation for his use of Web 2.0 technologies such as YouTube and Facebook to reach out to Toronto’s communities, especially youth and speaking to them through the technology mediums they regularly use.

Not only is his work recognized here in Canada, but his speech on the subject was recognized as a highlight at an Interpol conference in Johannesburg in November 2008.

The RCMP and the Canadian Teachers Federation have created a joint initiative to help deal with the problem of cyberbullying. The press release provides information on what resources are available to RCMP school liaison officers (called Youth Officers) that attend schools.

The press release also provides a link to www.deal.org which is a website hosted by the RCMP but where the content is provided by Canadian Youth. Deal.org has a flash game intended to educate young people on types of cyberbullying and what to do when they suspect it is happening.

Those readers who are interested in academic research on the study of Privacy as it relates to Privacy and Cyber Crime will want to check out The Privacy and Cyber Crime Institute at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University.

This organization is partially funded by contributions from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Best wishes for a prosperous 2009.

The Ottawa Business Journal (or the OBJ as we Ottawaians will often call it) is a local publication focused on business in the Ottawa area. It featured an article on the growing use and even greater possibilities of virtual worlds in business applications.

Like Editor Jim Donnelly who wrote the article I would “prefer an old fashion beer and a handshake” in many circumstances, but in the modern business and government environment where team members can be separated by thousands of miles, these three dimensional applications can make a lot of sense…with the appropriate policies, procedures and security measures in place of course.

I recommend this short article for any public or private sector individual interested in how to help “far flung” teams work more closely together through this medium.