Ever see someone do something bad but have no way to anonymously report it silently without drawing attention and danger to yourself. Well, now for than 100 communities (led by police departments in Boston, Cincinnati and Louisville) are allowing people to text in their eye witness crime tips, anonymously of course.

The Internet-based systems route messages through a server that encrypts cell phone numbers before they get to police, making tips virtually impossible to track.

Human rights organizations like Witness have been using a similar concept in allowing people to use their always on mobile devices to report and archive human rights abuses around the world. While WItness relies mostly on video, other groups have taken the concept beyond text messaging to the extent that they allow people to document the abuse any way a phone can: pictures, video, sound or text.

The police program is not there yet. Nevertheless an institution that has been thwarted time and again by the "text generation" and lost in the analog world appears to be realizing how the technology can work for them.

The campaign is set up to recruit teens and 20 somethings who in this day of age wont go out of there way t report a crime. But I think, provided the service becomes well known, that such a service has the potential to spill over into the general user age as well.

As I have seen time and time again, adults are apt to pick up new technologies very fast when it comes to issues that are important to them and crime certainly is one of those issues.

It seems to be working to some extent. Since the beginning of the year, cities such as Tampa, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Indianapolis, New Orleans and Detroit have started their own text-based tip systems, according to Texas-based Anderson Software, a leading providers of the technology. Many cities are adding the text messages to a system that already accepted anonymous tips through a Web site.

Police in the 1970s urged citizens to "drop a dime" in a pay phone to report crimes anonymously. Now in an increasing number of cities, tipsters are being invited to use their thumbs — to identify criminals using text messages.

There is no limit to what the mobile phone can be used to report. They key now is making people aware that they can use what they are already using to report the latest gossip for a higher purpose. Thats the challenge. [via SF Gate]

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