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Crime-Solving on Facebook

November 12, 2012

Crime-Solving on Facebook have turned to Facebook to hunt for criminals. Social media allows the police to reach people who today make little use of traditional forms of media, and so tend to miss police bulletins issued in newspapers and on wanted posters and television.

https://p.dw.com/p/14Zv2

The Hanover police are Facebook pioneers. Meanwhile their site has more than 100,000 fans, who see notices posted by the police on their Facebook stream. But data protection experts have criticized the program, causing Lower Saxony’s state government to put a temporary stop to policing via Facebook. Part of the problem is that police data from Germany is ending up on servers located in the United States. Now the police have come up with a solution - instead of posting their bulletins directly on Facebook, they’re posting links that bring users to the official police website.