July 25, 2007

The ideal mashup - social networking + sexual predator database - MyPredatorSpace!

I Caught wind of in interesting story on CNN this AM and it got me thinking about a fabulous idea for a mashup... perhaps even an "internal" mashup to be put in place by the likes of MySpace, Facebook, Match.com etc... how about mashing the social network with state and county court records information or existing Sexual Predator mashups in order to mash a user profile with a record that shows that him or her is a recorded sexual predator? Seems that social network sites are likely a very ripe playground for these potential abusers so imagine how cool it would be to flag someone's MySpace account with a little code or icon identifying them as a potential predator! Given that there's public records widely available flagging those with criminal records this would indeed be a welcomed service for those users of the popular networking resources. A great example of a predator database built by accessing public records is the Florida Sexual Predators mashup - see details at http://www.gisuser.com/index.php?option=com_akogallery&Itemid=97&func=detail&id=249

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about false positives? What happens if someone with the same name lives in the same neighbourhood as a predator? Wouldn't that destroy his life (further)?

I'm having some trouble with the term "identifying them as a potential predator!". The word "potential" already implicates that there might be false positives. So, before rushing ahead and create your "cool" mashup, please think of potential implications first!

Frank

gletham Communications said...

agreed (I guess) perhaps mashing with Convivted and KNOWN predators.. they info is publivly available (as I said before) so simply make it available to users of social networking sites where its been proven that known offenders have been lurking.. that's all.