The Uncovered Truth

Instead of searching for a specific truth on the net I decided to share my personal experience with an uncovered truth. During my freshman year of college at another University, someone broke into a dorm room and set it on fire using a can of harispray. At first, college officials blamed the two boys who owned the room. There was no evidence of an initial break in and it was basically their word against the fore marshall's. If anyone is unfamiliar with setting fire to dorm's, this type of arson is considered a felony and has serious consequences including a hefty amount of jail time. The investigation went on for a few weeks before the whole incident showed up in a u-tube video turned in by an anonymous student. The culprits had videotaped themselves setting the dorm room on fire and uploaded it there. Their faces we hidden but the police were able to use clothing and other clues from the home movie to find the real offenders. How stupid was that? They were so confidant they were not going to get caught that they uploaded their video for thousands to see. I tried to find the video but it has since been removed. This leads me to point out that police have now been searching the internet more and more for criminal evidence. Is this ethical? Should police be able to use u-tube videos as evidence? I think so. The internet is free game for everyone. The largest problem of using evidence gathered on-line is finding its validity. As we have discussed time and time again in class, because of the universal nature of web 2.0, it makes it harder and harder to find truth and to find trustworthy sources.