Solving murders with social media

Myself and Michelle McNamara have created a panel on crowdsourcing crimesolving for 2014’s SXSW. The questions we will answer:

• How are citizen detectives using the internet and social media circles to help find murderers, rapists, missing children and clues for unsolved crimes?
• What are the legal boundaries of citizen detection and how far can a citizen push on the web until it becomes entrapment or personal privacy invasion?
• What lessons can we learn from the Boston Bombing and Steubenville events, in which citizen detectives and bloggers posted evidence on the web and in some cases implicated innocent individuals?
• Law enforcement is slowly embracing social media to help solve crimes, but some have been critical of users doing their own detective work–even going as far saying they were “complicating” an investigation. How can law enforcement work with citizen detectives toward the common goal of catching the bad guy?
• What are some new tools and technologies on the web and in mobile that will be able to aid both professional and citizen detectives in finding information about unsolved crimes?

Vote for the panel here.