Dutch police use text messaging to identify rioters
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, September 3, 2005
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – In a high-tech hunt for hooligans, Dutch police sent 17,000 text messages to the mobile phones of fans who attended a soccer match marred by rioting.
Supporters rioted before, during and after the April 17 match in Rotterdam. Two train cars were vandalized beyond repair, 43 fans were arrested and 47 police officers and an unknown number of fans were injured.
Phone companies voluntarily handed over the mobile numbers of people who were in or around the stadium that day. The companies did not give individual names to police, and police sent a standard message asking people to come forward if they had information.
But some suspects apparently thought they had been fingered. Four suspects contacted police Wednesday, and a fifth turned himself in directly, Rotterdam police spokesman Ger de Jong said.
“Maybe they just think, ‘I’m going to get caught sooner or later so I better just turn myself in and get it over with,’” de Jong said.
Rotterdam police also filmed the clashes and have posted images of suspects on their Web site, drawing complaints from privacy groups.
De Jong said the posting the images contributed to 100 additional arrests in the months after the game.
BBC will allow show downloading: The British Broadcasting Corp. is planning to let Web users download its television and radio programs up to a week after they have aired.
BBC Director General Mark Thompson said he hoped the “MyBBCPlayer” service could be active by 2006.
Complete details weren’t released, and Thompson did not say whether the BBC would charge users a fee for the downloads or how it would prevent piracy and circulation beyond the week.
The plan is part of the BBC’s efforts to move beyond traditional forms of media.
Gap, Old Navy Internet stores closed: Already mired in a sales slump, Gap Inc. has closed its two most popular Internet stores so the clothing retailer can upgrade its online operations before the pivotal holiday shopping season.
Both Gap.com and OldNavy.com have been closed for the past week, driving frustrated shoppers including Kira Storch of San Francisco to other Web sites to buy clothes.
“I just felt stymied,” the 33-year-old Storch said. “I thought most Web sites only shut down during the middle of the night.”
Banana Republic, another chain owned by Gap, also closed its site two days last week before reopening Aug. 26.
Hoping to minimize the customer inconvenience, Gap waited until after most back-to-school shopping had been finished before launching a “soup-to-nuts” overhaul of its major e-commerce sites, said company spokeswoman Kris Marubio. She said the changes were too complex to enable the site to continue running.
“We think this is going to make for a more compelling and exciting experience for shoppers,” Marubio said.
Google looks to expand off-line: Advertisements powered by Google Inc.’s online search engine are already all over the Internet. Now, the company wants to expand its advertising empire offline, too.
In its first significant expansion beyond the Internet, Google has bought advertising in a handful of technology-industry magazines and resold chunks of the space to merchants already participating in its booming Internet marketing network.
The company confirmed the test Wednesday, but provided few other details in a statement.
“This limited test is part of Google’s continuing effort to develop new ways to provide effective and useful advertising to advertisers, publishers and users,” the Mountain View-based company said.
Some of the first print ads arranged by Google appeared in the Sept. 6 issue of PC magazine. Ads from five different companies appear on a full page punctuated with the tag line, “Ads by Google.”
The Associated Press
