Smile: You're Under Arrest

5:35 PM -- Could storage play a major role in the fight against crime? It certainly looks as if it will in New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg has announced a plan to use photos and video from citizens' cellphones to catch criminals.

In his recent State of the City address, Bloomberg said that New York will start equipping 911 call centers to receive digital images and videos from cell phones this year, although it's not clear exactly when the service will be up and running.

There have already been examples of cellphones being used to catch flashers on New York's subway system, although the ability to download images and video direct to the cops is something completely new.

It's intriguing to consider the back-end technology supporting the initiative. In a city of over 8 million inhabitants, that could be one hell of a lot of media servers and storage, not to mention state-of-the-art encryption to keep it all secure. (See Omneon Preps for $115M IPO and Email Security's Image Problem.)

Expect to hear more about the technology side of this story as it develops.James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch