Photosharing meets crimefighting

Worthy of note: the website, launched on Monday, for people to upload holiday snaps taken at the Ocean Club holiday resort, Praia da Luz which might yield clues as to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

They want anything in the two weeks before she went missing with ‘people in them who you don’t know as opposed to scenery shots or pictures of just your own family’. It’s a fairly basic file upload facility; pictures will be imported into the Childbase computer which (according to Sky’s Martin Brunt) will ‘scan the photos and recognise anyone who appears a number of times. It can also compare images with known sex offenders, both British and Portuguese.’

What has happened to that family is truly horrible – and gets worse as each day goes by. But I still have a very uncomfortable feeling about certain elements of the coverage.