Crimes that were Solved by the Internet

Everything has its pros and cons and the internet is no different. There are a lot of stories where the internet was used for evil purposes. On the contrary, there have been instances when people used the internet to solve crimes. Ordinary people were able to succeed where professional crime agencies and police departments failed. Let’s have a look at some of these cases where this revolutionary technology was used for the betterment of humanity.

Omni-Potent

In the most elusive corners of the internet, lies the dark web. You can find all kinds of nightmarish stuff there, including illegal drugs, child pornography, and hired killers. Brad Williams, an online hacker whose online name is Omni-Potent, decided to do something about it.

He developed a virus and used it to infect computers of over 3000 child predators. Unfortunately, the mass evidence he gathered was not allowed to be used in court because it was obtained illegally. The authorities were unable to act upon it due to this issue. However, Omni-Potent did manage to reveal a lot of these child predators. A few of them were also convicted.

Stolen Laptop

In today’s world, the very thought of losing your laptops and mobile phones can be scary. The expensiveness of these gadgets should not be the primary reason for concern. Losing your laptops or smartphones can be really devastating because of the personal information stored on them.

In this day and age of the internet, all this data can be used with malign intentions. That was probably what was going through Sean Power’s mind when his MacBook Pro was stolen. Although he was not in the city at the time, he had his backup in-place. He had the software on his laptop that pinged its location whenever it went online. Consequently, one of his 12,000 Twitter followers managed to retrieve the laptop for him.

Hit and Run

In the days without the internet, it was quite difficult to catch the culprits of hit and run cases. The lack of evidence and low chances of victims’ survival didn’t help the cause, either. Even if the victim survives the accident, it was very rare to find any conclusive evidence to identify the driver.

A cyclist was hit and killed by a collision in Washington. The cops didn’t have a clue about the perpetrator but the photo of the scene was uploaded on Reddit. It went viral and people urged each other to help to identify vehicle parts. A former state car inspector managed to trace down the exact car using the pictures. He informed the authorities and the owner was convicted.

Pushed to Suicide

When 18-year-old Nadia Kajouji committed suicide in Ottawa, her friends and family were devastated. It was told that she was going through a lot at school and recently had a miscarriage. As the story unfolded, it was soon discovered that she didn’t make the decision on her own.

Prior to her suicide, she had spoken to someone called Cami D (real name Melchert-Dinkel) on an internet forum. He was the one who had convinced her to take the final step. His identity was later discovered by Celia Bay, an online counselor. It was later found out that the same person was responsible for encouraging six other people for suicide. Following the discovery, he was arrested for assisting suicide.

Shaky Footage

A police officer, called Michael Slager, was convicted of shooting and killing an unarmed black man (Walter Scott), in South Carolina. He wasn’t immediately charged because the footage shot by witnesses was too shaky and inconclusive. As a result, Slager managed to remain free until a Canadian student decided to stabilize the video.

Daniel Voshart, who was studying cinematography, focused himself on image stabilization at that time. According to him, it was a racially-motivated crime and he wanted to do something about it. This was the motivation that made him stabilize the video. After completing his work on the video, he posted it as a GIF on Reddit. This mobilized the online community in support of the victim and the conviction of Slager became possible.