on social media about neighbourhood crime has become an increasingly popular trend, however experts have warned it can be risky.
Online feeds and community pages are littered with images and videos of alleged criminals caught on CCTV, along with call-outs to identify them.
Noela Lowrey has overseen a crime watch Facebook page for 10 years.
Mackay Crime Watch has four administrators and more than 50,000 members, and receives multiple requests from people to post on the page every day.
But they do not all get approved.
“We have to approve posts and keep an eye on commentary, remove anything that is not suitable for the page and anything that is too inflammatory or defamatory,” Ms Lowrey said.
“The function of the page to me is that it’s a warning, it’s an alert, it’s like, ‘Attention folks, this is happening in your area’.”
From stolen mail to stolen cars, it’s technically not illegal to post about it.
But according to two legal experts, it is risky business.
Artificial intelligence in mix
Bill Potts has been a criminal lawyer in Queensland for 42 years.
He said while he understood posts about local crime served a purpose for frightened communities, peopled need to be wary.
“People have to be very careful before they start identifying people willy-nilly, because essentially, it’s a form of digital vigilantism,” Mr Potts said.
Mr Potts said while people using crime watch pages often thought they were being good citizens, they could also be being tricked.
“It might be that whoever’s identified them has, through the use of artificial intelligence … changed the faces or has deliberately put somebody else’s head on somebody else’s body,” he said.
He said if you called someone a criminal and you were wrong, you could find yourself charged with stalking, or using the internet as a means of harassing someone.
A defamation risk
Billy Fitzgerald, a partner at Rose Litigation Lawyers, said when it came to “naming and shaming” alleged criminals online, it could also be a major defamation risk if that person was misidentified.
“They are effectively publishing the identity of a person and if that is incorrect then they are the ones that are responsible for defamation,” Mr Fitzgerald said.
He said other people could be at risk of facing legal action too, including the original person to post the content, the administrator of the page, anyone that shared it, and the platform that hosted the content, such as Facebook.
However, both Mr Fitzgerald and Mr Potts said the strongest case would be against the person who had published the wrong identification.
Mr Fitzgerald said his firm recently acted for a client who was found to have been defamed in an online blog.
“As part of the Supreme Court judgement, the client was awarded damages against the defendant in the order of $400,000,” he said.
“I often use this as a cautionary tale of the fraught dangers associated with online publications.”
Contempt of court possible
Mr Potts warned identifying an alleged criminal online could also endanger police investigations and court proceedings.
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