Imagine this. You're in a big crowd at a concert of 12,000 people. You're an excited teenager. You have a phone and decide to tweet something to people about it all. A tweet done quickly, and one that perhaps has a double meaning (as many smart phone texts can do from predictive texting) but whatever the meaning the intent was completely innocuous. Out of that crowd of 12,000 people watching the concert, the authorities become aware of your tweet/text and track you down in that crowd (using your online twitter picture to identify you). You are arrested at the authorities request even though the police don't want to arrest you.
Sound like science fiction? It could never happen? Maybe in the US, but surely not here in Australia? Think again darlings..... It's just happened here at the Pink concert, Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne.
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested at Pink’s concert at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne after tweeting an alleged bomb threat.
The teen tweeted "@Pink I’m ready with my Bomb. Time to blow up #RodLaverArena".
A police spokeswoman told ninemsn officers were called to the event in relation to a "bomb threat" around 8.30pm last night.
"Police interviewed a 16-year-old Warrnambool boy and he will be charged on summons," she said.
The boy’s father, David King, told 3AW this morning the tweet was a reference to the popstar’s song 'Timbomb' but, caught up in the excitement of the concert last night, his son did not write the full word.
“When he wrote that he didn’t have time to put ‘Timebomb,’ you know,” Mr King said.
Mr King had to collect his son from police after authorities spotted the tweet and tracked down the teen in the crowd of 12,000 Pink fans.
Mr King said he believed police located his son after using his Twitter profile picture to identify him.
“The policeman said to me, 'if it was up to me, I would have booted him in the backside and said go home',” Mr King said, speaking to 3AW hosts Ross Stevenson and John Burns this morning.
“But they demanded (he) be arrested.” StoryI smell several rats.
How did the "authorities", who "spotted the tweet", actually do this? There must have been a fuckin lot of tweets going out of a 12,000 fan strong concert. To spot one tweet in that, that was ambiguous (to say the least) regarding a "bomb threat", was in itself a remarkable technological achievement.
How did they use a picture from his twitter profile to do this? Were they using face recognition software?
How in the hell could you spot someone's face in such a crowd (even with face recognition software) when it's dark and lights from the concert are fucking with the vision, without having at least some idea of the area of the crowd he was in?
Were they using some kind of satellite phone tracking technology (that's been around for ages) and using that to pinpoint him in the crowd?
Are Pink's porterage all from the US, paranoid, scared of being imminently blown up? Have the tech experts gone too far here?
What are the implications for something like this to happen on our own turf? Have our local laws in all of this been suspended for one night at the Rod Laver Arena? Do our local laws even cover such an invasion of such invasive technology?
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