Wikiwanderers? Crowdsourcing from Footy to Terror

You may have read the news that a Ebbsfleet United are adding the so-called The Wisdom of Crowds to the beautiful game after Myfootballclub.co.uk purchased a majority stake in the club. 20,000 people paid Myfootballclub £35 to share in the running of the team. In the interview below Tim Glynne-Jones from the company explains the deal:

An Israeli club have taken the idea a little further, with fans actually directing tactics during the game - they languish in Israel's sixth division.

While the jury is still out on crowdsourcing and football - The Wisdom of Crowds is gaining considerable currency in the business world. Don Tapscott is the author of Wikinomics and wrote the foreword to the book We Are Smarter Than Me (a collaboratively written book on a similar theme) - he explains the idea behind the Wisdom of Crowds and how businesses are making use of the concept:

Beyond business law enforcement agencies are interested in the opportunities new technology presents for harnessing the power of the crowd. Today I was sent a link (thanks Clark!) pointing to this post from Dangerroom looking at the Crowdsourcing National Securityand an experiment in the crowdsourcing of border security - more from the Del Rio News Herald:

Ordinary citizens may soon be able to help law enforcement officers fight crime along the border. Anyone with access to a computer and the Internet now can log onto https://www.texasborderwatch.com and view one of nine cameras placed at locations along the Texas-Mexico border.

And Canadian police have successfully posted video to YouTube in an effort to catch offenders. Over here local residents in Shoreditch, London had the chance to watch so-called, "ASBO TV" - a TV channel that let them monitor local CCTV footage.

Is this an idea that should be taken further? What if anyone could watch a CCTV camera and report suspicious behaviour to the police? It's a powerful tool but civil liberties issues abound - The Spy Blog has been covering many of them. Can, and should, the investigation of crime be crowdsourced? In a sense it has been since the invention of the wanted poster - but modern technology raises difficult new issues. Your thoughts welcome.

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