- Saturday, 21 November 2009
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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the first - Einstein
Google finds kidnapped girl
INSPECTOR Knacker of the Athol yard found that Google search helped him with his inquiries into the kidnapping of a nine-year-old girl.
The girl had gone missing after being picked up by her grandmother on Saturday. The child's guardians contacted police after grandma threatened that they would never see her again.
Coppers in in Athol, Massachusetts, obtained the coordinates of the girl's mobile phone from her telephone operator. They found that the phone's coordinates kept coming in within 300 feet of an intersection in Virginia. However since they were in Massachusetts they were unable to have a look.
Then one bright spark stuck the address into Google Street View to virtually look around the intersection, and saw a large building nearby. The building was a hotel and the coppers thought that was where the grandmother was hiding the girl.
Virginia state police swooped and found girl and her grandmother hiding out at the hotel. The grandmother has since been arrested.
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by google and that person. :)
Shouldn't the title be "Police use detective work to solve crime"?
It's just sad that this is newsworthy these days.
Hopefully the intelligence services will update the appropriate data mining algorithms to ensure in future the grandmother will already have been incarcerated and this shocking requirement for procedure and thought won't happen again.