FBI Uses Times Square Billboards to Track Down Criminals FBI’s Most Wanted Show Up on Times Square Digital Billboards

Technology nowadays lets people do some extraordinary things. That s how
some brilliant minds at the FBI decided to use some of this public tech
in their favor. FBI s most wanted list is now being featured in New
York, right on one of those impressive digital billboards otherwise used
to influence the mind of consumers with aggressive advertising campaigns.
And given the fact that the Times Square is a very popular area in
Manhattan, chances are that some people might notice the FBI billboards
and actually come up with some useful information for the Bureau. The
FBI-dedicated billboard has been turned on yesterday and it will be used
to air pictures of well known fugitives and missing persons.
This is not the first time such an initiative has been used. A similar
pilot program in Philadelphia led to two arrests before Clear Channel
Outdoors offered this particular New York billboard to the FBI. The
billboard is located above the entrance to the W Hotel and it s
surrounded by regular billboards that advertise Broadway musicals.
Furthermore, the FBI has now access to 430 billboards in 33 cities which
are also managed by Clear Channel.
Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance had this to say
about these unusual crime-fighting billboards:
As far as I'm concerned, this makes Times Square even safer. No bad guy
is going to want to hang out in a place where there's a 100-foot image
of him for all the world to see.
But what do you think, folks? Do we really need to advertise the worst
in us on huge digital billboards? Should such a measure be employed on a
worldwide scale?
One would think that with all the tech around us it would be a lot
easier to catch bad guys in the 21st century. Well apparently it isn t
and we still have to rely on �Wanted � signs to capture some of those
criminal minds.