UK detectives to nab criminals using Twitter

Detectives in UK will now be trained to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to catch killers and other criminals.
Student investigators will be shown how they could trace wanted people on Facebook and Twitter, where they might leave posts revealing valuable clues.

Updated training for Britain’s annual crop of 3,500 trainee detectives will include pointers on how to track criminals on micro-blogging site Twitter and look at Facebook pages for witnesses, a spokesman for the national policing improvement agency said on Friday.

“It’s a way of tracking down criminals,” the spokesman said.

“Finding the sort of people they’ve contacted and the sort of groups they’re a member of.”

The new training, which will be available starting in January of next year, will also include information on how to gather clues from computers, cell phones and other electronic devices. Facebook and Twitter are both enormously popular in Britain and online indiscretions regularly feature in accounts of how police secure convictions.