This feels like a turning point for crowd media sources, especially compared to traditional sources. Hopefully news agencies have to adapt or die in the coming months and years. I wonder if there is going to be any issues with scanners as a result of this. Or maybe police are going to utilize technology that prevents eaves-dropping, if such technology exists.
I know if I were the FBI, I would set up official media dump sites where people can post pictures related to disasters or situations as they unfold. Or establish policy with existing sites in order to get the latest information. Or maybe utilize advanced visual search engines to comb through databases to find relevant images. Maybe they already do, I dunno.
I think as media capturing devices not only become more numerous, but the amount of "uptime" for data collection is increased; every person walking around is going to become a digital witness.
The next step beyond that is when people are no longer just dumping information, but receiving live alerts and updates based on their location. So each time a suspect recognition triggers in some search program, his position gets updated. It would be like gps tracking based entirely on image captures.
Anyways, Glad I logged in tonight and started listening to the scanner stream. That was an incredible experience.