Posted by Kay on 13 February 2012
The mobile revolution has had an unintended consequence in the public arena – the fact that it is now so much easier than ever before to snap a photo or even take a live action video. This unintended consequence can have highly positive results, as was the case this week on the London Waterloo to Guildford line. A woman from East Moseley had been on the train and had inadvertently left her bag behind when she left the carriage. Inside the bag was her mobile phone, which began to ring.
Another passenger on the train decided to steal the mobile phone but Matt Parker, a maths teacher at Queen Mary University, got out his own mobile phone and recorded the incident on video. Photographs of the thief – brazen enough to actually pose with the phone he was stealing – have now been posted in multiple locations online and police have high hopes that the culprit will be identified and brought to justice.
Because mobile phones are now almost universally equipped with cameras, and because more and more Brits are purchasing a phone from retailers such as MyMobileDeal.com, the public sphere is becoming a place where any action might be recorded. Brits have long been used to the idea that CCTV cameras might ‘catch them in the act’, but this is different: allowing ordinary citizens to wield cameras as well means that criminals might be ‘caught in the act’ in places that CCTV cameras do not reach.
For crime victims who may see justice as a result, this consequence of the mobile revolution is a highly positive one.