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New York City will install new technology to allow 911 centers to receive images from cell phones. Citizens will be able to send still images or videos from camera phones or computers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The city joins several other municipalities that are testing similar services, though it is probably the largest to try such a project.

Bloomberg said this week he hopes to expand the technology to eventually serve the city's 311 services, used to report quality-of-life problems like potholes.

New Yorkers have already used their phones to take a bite out of crime; Newsday reported that in 2005 two schoolgirls snapped a picture of a subway flasher with a cell phone, and gave it to police, who tracked down and arrested the man.

Blog community response:

"Maybe this doesn't go far enough. The next step should be for them to make all the images and video publicly available somewhere, so that crowds of web surfers can vote on which images and videos are actually crimes, and which aren't worth bothering with. Think of it as a Digg for law enforcement."
--Techdirt

"I personally think this is a great idea, but I wonder who they will hire to screen through all of the hoax videos that they receive."
--Darla Mack

"If the participatory 911/311 panopticon stands alongside other emerging community response networks, then this is, on balance, likely a positive development, as the citizens will continue to have channels to report problems that the city personnel might neglect. If the program results in pressure to shut down or block non-official networks, these citizen systems won't go away, of course, they'll just be driven underground, making them less reliable and pervasive. This could be a moment for civic empowerment -- or a moment where an early version of the participatory panopticon is smothered by bureaucracy. Let's hope they don't screw it up."
--Open the Future