If you live in this country and have a Twitter account, you've probably heard of PigSpotter. If you haven't, he's an anonymous white male living in Johannesburg who's made it his mission to tell everyone via Twitter where the Metro police are on a particular day.
So if you follow him, you can get an almost real-time update of where there are speed traps, bribe-traps, cameras and so on. He's now got thousands of followers in Johannesburg and kindred spirits in Durban and Cape Town, despite only being active for a few months.
The Metro police aren't happy about this and have filed charges that include crimen injuria (PigSpotter used creative pork-based names for his targets, although he's backed off now) and defeating the ends of justice.
Clearly, Johannesburg Metro Police think that PigSpotter is some kind of one-man army, speeding all over town and reporting on their movements by himself. By catching him they'll put a stop to this phenomenon.
Unlikely
No chance. Welcome to 2010 guys. Your enemy isn't PigSpotter - it's all of us who send him information. See, we've all got smartphones with Twitter applications, and we can send updates to him as we see fit. He's just a clearinghouse for all of our information, adding his own amusing twist on things relevant and filtering out the irrelevant.
If you shut him down by whatever means - and good luck forcing Twitter in the US to give up his real name, should they even know what it is - then another account will just pop up and we'll all start following that.
Your enemy isn't PigSpotter - it's all of us who send him information.
Paul Furber, ITWeb contributor
PigSpotter could actually be replaced by an automated script that just re-tweets whatever anyone sends it, and the effect would be almost exactly the same: near-real-time crowdsourced information.
Perhaps you could set us an example. Because at the moment, you don't. You don't wear seatbelts and then fine us for not doing so. You break the law by hiding behind trees, bushes and electrical boxes. You've written off hundreds of vehicles we paid for with your appalling driving. I have personal experience of one of your officers lying on a statement to cover up his personal responsibility for a bad accident. Your involvement in the McBride and Bees Roux cases stinks. You're now illegally rifling through people's cellphones without a warrant to see if they're PigSpotter supporters. Or something. I'm not sure.
Are these only a few bad apples in your ranks? Are all your efforts aimed at making money or saving lives? Until we get some answers we can believe, then you'll be playing whack-a-mole with whatever Internet services we use to keep you honest.
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