All that has been covered on the TV news this morning has been the arrest of a suspect for the Ipswich / Suffolk / Trimley prostitute murders. What caught my eye in particular was the fact that the TV coverage focused rather heavily on the fact that the suspect, Tom Stephens, has a MySpace. And a brief search online showed that The Guardian has shown us where Tom's MySpace is - http://www.myspace.com/85784962.
So was the suspect's use of social networks such as MySpace instrumental in his apprehension? From what I have read I think not. Will the openly searchable links to his "friends" and their networks help the police? I expect it will. But now that, probably, millions of the world's e-literate home detectives will be perusing and blogging about the suspect's online life, how will this impact his life and the privacy of his online friends. Will they be blocked? Will they be deleted? They haven't been yet.
I hope that social networks will help create better visibilty for the police and other forces involved in issues such as this. But my concern is that it is at the expense of the privacy of the extended networks caught up in the action and the innocent-until-proven-guilty suspects involved.
At the time of writing this post, Tom has seven friends on MySpace and I hear this morning he had nine. Google says there are six links on blogs to Tom Stephen's profile using his profile shortcut (myspace.com/85784962) and 14 links to Tom's profile through the long version. The Guardian's coverage of this issue can be found here
* Update 8:30am on 19/12 - Tom Stephen's MySpace has now been deleted.
"Will the openly searchable links to his "friends" and their networks help the police? I expect i will."
Go Drew! :-)
Posted by: Stephen Davies | December 18, 2006 at 03:36 PM
Freudian in a very superheroic sense. Cheers Groucho ;-)
Posted by: Drew B | December 18, 2006 at 04:05 PM
I worry that this information could prejudice any court case.
What do you think?
Posted by: Ian Delaney | December 18, 2006 at 06:37 PM
Re. Ian's comment... given that UGC is treated in a similar way to traditional journalism except it's much more open then he has a very good point. I have already visited the site and had my judgement swayed.
What laws does MySpace fall under? Plus if it is hosted in the US will UK law apply. All good questions... that's why they've made him editor of NMK!!
Posted by: Simon Collister | December 18, 2006 at 06:56 PM
Ian, I think that's a huge issue. Photos, links and rumours are spreading around the media - blogs, news sites and traditional news outlets - and this is going to prejudice court cases big time. But this time I think the papers started it. This story has only really today started to spread through social media sites. It won't always be like this. How long before the bloggerati start ousting every MySpacing crime suspect for hw world to see?
Posted by: Drew B | December 18, 2006 at 07:17 PM