04/23/09 Should The Greenwich Police Department Put Mugshots Up On Twitter?

It’s one thing to see the mugshots of famous people show up on the web but getting busted for anything in Denton could see you show up on Twitter

The Latest High Tech Police Tool:

Denton, Texas Police Use Twitter To Post Mugshots

DentonPolice Twitters recent mugshots. And, my God, are some of them terrific.

A Winning Smile

This 19-year-old pictured above was arrested for drinking an alcoholic beverage. Judging from his smile, it was an Electric Lemonade from T.G.I.Friday’s.

For The Record:

To make it clear this isn’t an official Twitter profile for the Denton police but rather an experiment by an art student as a way to show just how much personal stuff ends up available on the web.

Through some simple scraping of the public information available on the Denton police web site the student creates a Twitter post of the date and time of the arrest, the age of the charged person along with their mugshot posted to TwitPic. I am sure there are some who think this is a pretty cool idea but it also shows just how scary Twitter can be as a publishing platform. Considering just how much personal stuff is available on the web the idea that it could show up on something like Twitter without you even knowing about it should make people just a tad nervous.

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