Ubiquitous Mobile phones – useful for criminals too

I attended a course on Mobile Marketing at UCT’s Graduate School of Business at the end of July. Getting on top of mobile technologies and tools is a must globally – but more so in South Africa (and Africa generally), where traditional internet penetration (~12% in SA) pales in comparison to mobile penetration (>80%).

We got a great overview of the different tools, and how cell phones are being used by marketers and people in their target markets, and I have got a couple of exciting new ideas for our purposes.

However, I read a post on the DA’s crime blog, Eye on Crime, which gives a rather chilling account of how cell phones are being used by burglars to scope potential targets.

Unfortunately, it isn’t only law-abiding citizens who benefit from new technology.

Citizen Activism 2.0 – Eskom and the Scorpions

The DA often comes up with ideas for initiatives (not only online) around issues and concerns that are at the forefront of the public’s attention. For example, we launched Victims of Crime at a time when crime was very much in people’s mind’s eye – shortly after some very high profile murders (a concern still very prominent in the public mind).

We don’t always think of those ideas first, though.

This week, trade union Solidarity launched Eskom Stories – a platform for people to share their experience of Eskom’s incapacity, to vent and perhaps offer suggestions about how to ameliorate the situation.

FB community honours murdered Professor

This afternoon, Professor Mike Larkin of UCT’s law department will be laid to rest in Rondebosch. He was stabbed and murdered for the briefcase he was carrying home from work last Friday evening, most likely resisting because of the exam scripts therein. From what I have heard and read of Prof. Larkin over the last week, the inconvenience the loss of these scripts would cause his students was probably foremost in his mind, instead of his own safety.

You might wonder why I am writing about this here on a blog about political marketing and new media (not withstanding the warning in my first blog that I might climb on a political soapbox from time to time), and not as a contribution to the DA’s Eye on Crime blog. There are two reasons…