#pigspotter - How the city of Johannesburg uses Twitter to evade the police

• Author: Matthew Jackson
• Comments: 2

Once upon a time, during the unhygienic troglodytic era, a caveman wandered up to a fetid carcass covered in flies and helped himself to a chunk of meat he hadn’t done anything to earn. He was murdered for his antics, his cognitive faculties turned into a dripping, stone-age rendition of Jackson Pollock’s Lavender Mist –with pink accents added to secure our prehistoric author’s authenticity.

It should come as no surprise that the rest of the monkey-men and women were not impressed. After all, you need a special education to appreciate fine art.

Our homoimperfectus troop responded as any semi-modern society would; they tore the perpetrator of the murder from limb to limb. They bedecked their cave with his severed appendages – a subtle warning to aspiring creatives and homicidal maniacs alike. Thus was born something which passed for justice. It wasn’t perfect, but then; most things aren’t.

Ever since this fateful day, mankind has been doing everything in its power to escape the wrath of the law and the ideas of the consenting hegemony. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about jaywalkers or murderers; criminals, perceived or otherwise, will do anything in their power to escape the consequences of their actions.

Increasingly, technology has become the means by which society as a whole sticks it to the man. Where it started is anyone’s guess; I’d hazard mine at the use of radio scanners to monitor police activity. But bootlegged mead or bribes of flint would probably be closer to the truth.

I’m not about to stand up and pledge my support for all things criminal. I’ll leave that task to my government. That said; you have to admire the devious nature of South Africans in general and Johannesburgers in particular. If you sign up to twitter and search for #pigspotter, you’ll find a plethora of tweets that share the location and activities of police in and around Johannesburg. Essentially, the people of Johannesburg are using social media to help each other escape traffic fines and roadblocks designed to catch drunk drivers.

Twitter, coupled with the portability of mobile phones, has enabled Johannesburgers to set up an informal information network which would impress even the most Machiavellian of mob bosses.
Using technology to commit crimes is nothing new. Drug lords are building submarines for smuggling cocaine in the middle of the jungle, while student groups design phone applications to help illegal immigrants cross the American border. On a private level, people across the globe are using torrent trackers to pirate software, music and movies.

The #pigspotter initiative is not surprising in the least and I do believe that other metropolitan South African cities will start implementing similar initiatives using their own specific hashtags.

Whether the police are aware of the situation is debateable, even if they are there’s not very much they can do about the situation. So, if you’re driving about during the night on the weekend, take a little extra care. There’s a good chance that the drivers around you are completely smashed and trying to use their phones at the same time.

Update, September 10

Cliff, THE Pigspotter, has just been in touch via the comments section of this blog and twitter. After going through his tweets, it would appear that what has been written above did not cover all of the facts when it comes to the motivating factors behind #pigspotter. While I do know a couple of people who are using the tool to evade the long arm of the law, the dominant sentiment on Cliffs page, endorsed by Cliff and a large number of his followers, is that #pigspotter is there to help stamp out corruption and the abuse of police power and that drunk driving is not to be tolerated.  Cliff will be contacting me later this evening, with a little luck I’ll have some more insights to share with you.

Have a look at the tweets below or check out pigspotter to get a better understanding of what the initiative is actually about.

» Tweets from the pigspotter page