• Wired, Friday, March 2, 2012 12:15 PM

Forget Angry Birds and FarmVille. Twitter and the U.S. State Department have a new game for people to play: Working with other connected citizens to collar criminals on the lamb! “Cops have routinely shared mugshots with one another -- and with the general public -- for ages,” writes Wired.com. “But distributing the photos globally, and hoping for an instant capture in five places at once? That’s anything but routine.”

Wired is referring to a worldwide manhunt, which is set to kick off at the end of March. The search across America and Europe for five fugitives, identifiable only by their mugshots, is just a simulated exercise, but it has real world implications for federal authorities. The game could demonstrate “to the planet’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies that they can hunt down fleeting suspects using nothing but their wits and social media connections,” Wires writes.

The “Tag Challenge,” so-named, isn’t the first contest designed to show how a networked crowd can uncover seemingly obscure information in a hurry. This simulation, however, may be the one with the widest scope, and, as Wired notes, the most relevance to government agencies. What would George Orwell say about such efforts? How about, “I told you so.”

Read the whole story at Wired »