LAPD catches smiling looter through Flickr

This is more than just the story about a looter who smiled for the cameras as he ripped off a gas station.  It’s also a story about the modern surveillance state: Forget the all-seeing “Big Brother” of 1984 fame. It turns out that crime doesn’t pay in an era of 300 million Little Brothers either.

Photos posted on Flickr.com allowed the LAPD to make an arrest

The story of this smiling crook is pretty simple:  There was a celebration in the streets of Los Angeles after the LA Lakers won the NBA Championship this spring.  The atmosphere was mostly peaceful, but  a few fans got carried away and took advantage of the party in order to carry out a bit of looting and rioting.  The LAPD arrested around 17 people at the scene, but was unable to catch many of the looters who stole food and soda from a Shell gas station downtown.

A fellow fan caught a few photos of the mob scene on his digital camera.  Several of these photos showed a looter running from the gas station to a car with two cases of soda (and an ear-to-ear smile).

Unsurprisingly, the photographer put the photos online.  Tens of thousands of photos like this one go on sites like Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace every day.  The photographer didn’t mean to help law enforcement out by putting the photos online;  he just wanted to share his experience one night in the City of Angels.

The LAPD, on the other hand, were quite happy to have a treasure trove of public images and video of the rioting and disorder downtown.  The police found the photos on Flickr, probably just by searching for “LA riots” and filtering out the photos from all the other riots in LA.  From these publicly-visible photos, they were able to find photos that showed tens of people caught red-handed.  In this case, the alleged looter was photographed standing next to a car (with its rear license plate visible) and getting ready to load his ill-gotten soda into its trunk.  The police could have easily just run the plates on the car and found either the looter or somebody near him. From there, it was a simple matter to identify and arrest the “Flickr Lootr” at his job (ironically enough, as a guard at a hospital).

Ten years ago, the smiling looter would still be at large.  He would be at home, enjoying his stolen Rockstar Energy Drink and his Arizona Iced Tea.  In the film era, these photographs would have been filed away in a shoebox somewhere and maybe shown to a few friends or relatives.  The police never would have seen the photos, and the police would never have arrested the suspect here.

That all changed thanks to the Internet.   The power of the Internet allowed the photographer to post all of his photos of an event in Los Angeles so that the world could see them.  The power of the Internet allowed the police to search through these photos and find clear shots of suspects caught in the act.  And the power of the Internet allows you to read about these events today.

The Internet has fundamentally changed expectations of privacy, especially surrounding photography.  Sometimes it’s good: you can share your family photos through Flickr, and the police can catch criminals who harm society.  But sometimes this always-on digital age starts to resemble the world of Orwell’s 1984: everything you do can be seen by the world, for better or for worse.  I’ll bet the smiling looter agrees.

The public service announcement lesson for today: Don’t mug for the cameras when looting.
(and wipe that grin off your face!)

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