The mobile-phone police

“Super Bowl XLIII uses 21st century technology to insure (sic) that fans have a positive experience on February 1, 2009,” the press release from InStadiumSolutions (ISS) exclaimed. “Fans will be able to text issues right from their cell phone directly to the security command center in Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida.”
ISS claims its product was used at the NCAA football championship game earlier this month, and the company is marketing the thing to pro sports teams and NASCAR.
Cellphones, like Santa Claus, know whether you’ve been bad or good. So be good for goodness’ sake. Or security will be summoned.
“Text messaging is the simplest tool in giving fans a voice and allowing venues to act upon the issues,” the company claims. “If there’s someone around you that’s just really ruining your day, now you don’t have to sit there in silence,” NFL Director of Strategic Security Jeffrey Miller added in the release.
Not to pick nits, but where exactly are those stadiums where fans are forced “to sit there in silence” instead of telling the slobbering boor in the front row to quiet down? Wouldn’t you say the simplest tool for giving fans a voice, is, you know, their vocal chords?
None of this is to say that mobile sousveillance – a generic term for the act of using a phone to influence human behavior – isn’t a valuable social tool. New York City police three years ago nabbed a suspect after a quick-thinking woman used her phone to take a photo of a man allegedly zipping up after he flashed her. Rioters at a University of Massachusetts/Amherst football game were identified in 2007 after some students posted cellphone videos of the melee on YouTube. And online destination HollaBackNYC “empowers New Yorkers to holla back at street harassers” by submitting cellphone pics of cretins to be posted on the site.
Law enforcement agencies have gotten into the act, too. A London borough recently outfitted 11 environmental officers will video-enabled phones to record offenders, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg last year unveiled a service that allows callers to 911 to send photos or video “to assist in crime fighting and report quality of life complaints.”
It’s clear, then, that mobile phones can be a powerful way to hold people accountable for their actions. Not only can they help convict criminals, they can be an effective – if sometimes unfair – means of shaming those whose behavior falls somewhere between illicit and merely abhorrent.
But ISS’s offering seems like a solution to a very rare problem. Yes, we’ve all endured screamed profanities and drunken rants at the stadium, but the idiots are often shouted down by more rational fans, resolving the situation. And security is almost always nearby at pro sporting events in case they’re needed.
The mobile phone is a wonderful way to communicate with others around the world via voice, text, photos and video. But it seems like a poor way of actually getting the jerk next to you to shut up.