Reply to post: Re: How is this a "thought crime unit"?

London cops waste £2.1m on thought crime unit – and they want volunteer informers

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: How is this a "thought crime unit"?

You might be surprised how easy it is to find where people live based on social media information if you know where to dig. It is very easy to link someone's Twitter handle to their Facebook, which can be used to find out in what city they live. Even if they don't explicitly list that info you can often find it based on who their friends are, places they've been, pictures they have doing day to day stuff like walking the dog.

Once you have it narrowed down that to level, public records for stuff like home ownership, vehicle registration and so forth can provide the exact address. I'm sure a little social engineering would probably work with the utility companies, they don't treat your address as privileged information and in fact when I've called they've told me my address and asked to confirm it! Assuming a threat on Twitter is meaningless because the one making the threat has no possible way to locate a victim is foolish.

Obviously most people aren't going to call the police for an offhand comment, just like most people won't call the police if you get a crank call with a threat. But if something sounds legitimate and serious you should have the right to call the cops and have a proper investigation done, just like you would if they called your cell at 3am. Maybe it turns out the guy making the threat lives 10,000 miles away, in which case you might sleep easier figuring it will be harder to carry out than if the guy who lives 10 miles away.

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