Winner! The State Department’s Tag Challenge crowns the Kings of Social Media Sleuthing

Using social media to track down bad guys. We told you about the TAG Challenge a few weeks ago. It was made possible by a State Department grant.

The challenge essentially took the concept of tag that we all played as kids.

The premise is simple: Teams worked to track down five jewel thieves from around the world. The test is to see if it can be done better and faster using networked technologies — twitter, facebook or any social media tool you can get your hands on.

The State Department believes that the challenge can help all of us to learn how social media and open source data can be used. And the winner is… MIT’s Team CrowdScanner.

Manuel Cebrian was part of that winning team for CrowdScanner. He told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER how he won.

Tag Challenge Winner by cdorobek

Can social networking really help track down thieves?

To listen to Manuel’s full interview you can catch the full radio show at GovLoop Insights or your can subscribe to our itunes channel.

Don’t miss our interview with TAG organizer Joshua DeLara.