04/06/2007

Web 2.0 will be the next big weapon in the battle against crime, it has been claimed.

Waleli, a Dutch company, has developed MMS-witness, a system allowing citizens to video crime-in-progress and upload it onto the internet.

Witnesses will be encouraged to covertly film events and then text the recordings to a central police database.

Lawrence Masle, head of international business development at Waleli, said: 'In Europe alone, more than half the population carry a camera phone in their pocket - the use of camera phones to take photographs in a social setting is an everyday occurrence.'

'News programmes now actively encourage members of the public to send in photographs or footage of significant news events that they have captured on their mobile phones.'

The crime-busting potential of MMS-witness also brings with it a new set of possible problems.

Police receive thousands of hoax 999 calls each year and there is no news yet as to how MMS-witness will combat this problem, although mobile phone calls are generally easier to trace to a particular individual.