If you are a citizen of Hillsborough County, Florida, odds are you are unaware that the crime information for the county (as well as unsolved crimes where the police and sheriff’s office are actively seeking informers) is posted online.  Now, it’s not exactly put very conspicuously, but it’s posted online [1].  This particular site shows that in the past week 139 crimes have been reported in the University area near the University of South Florida, by far the number one highest crime area.

Now, as an information junkie I enjoy this sort of info.  However, there is a bit of concern with the outsourcing of criminal detective work to ordinary citizens.  The biggest concern is a reply of what happened during the times of Communism in many Eastern European nations, the turning of people against each other, the larger number of ‘informers’ for the state security apparatus, and the destruction of trust.  This concern is minimal so long as a nation’s legal system and its society are governed by the same moral code, but if the majority of the people (or even a substantial minority) ceased to support the current system of law and government, then there would exist the sort of situation that could lead to the police and the general citizenry being at odds.

It is at that moment, when the legal and criminal system is directly hostile to the interests and wants of the people, and when the security police actively seeks support and information prom the populace that the police state forms.  Fear becomes a constant companion of those who seek liberty.  No one knows who is a spy and who is for real, or whether one will wake up in a cell being tortured, or wake up at all.  Does one choose exile, martyrdom, or an uncertain and shadowy existence in one’s homeland.  None of the choices are that good.  Hopefully the increase in the public nature of crimes and punishment does not bring those days closer to these lands.

[1] http://gis.hcso.tampa.fl.us/crimemapping/