Saving the world with your phone and the Internet

Witnessing a crime in New York is unfortunately common. Luckily, so is having a camera phone.

To take advantage of that, last Wednesday New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a program that lets witnesses of crimes or other "dangerous living conditions" use their camera phones to transmit images or video to the police by using 911 or by uploading their shots to the city's Web site.

I propose New York creates a mashup of sorts. Think Flickr and Yelp together. A place that lets people easily tag and geotag their media, along with creating an easy way reach consensus about places or people in their area. As far as videos or pictures of violent crimes, it's a thin line of privacy and decency vs. many people helping you find a perpetrator's identity. It will be interesting to see what kind of system the city comes up with and how long it takes for the first Hollywood screenplay about a camera phone witness protection program.