October 7, 2013 – The Scotts Valley City Council has recently approved a one year trial of a new information technology service designed to report in real-time, issues and trends that could affect our schools, students and can be helpful in avoiding potential future dangerous situations in our schools. The cost for the trial is reportedly $2,500 for the year.
The program is called TipNow, which was created by Resiligence, Inc., a Silicon Valley Company founded in 2007.
One feature of the program is a system that scans and searches, blogs, social networks like Facebook and Twitter among many other social media sites, for keywords that it then sends to law enforcement agencies or security agencies of the organizations if deemed serious enough. For example, key words such as “bullets” or “rape” could be scanned constantly and when the words come up via the filter, they can then be reported to the proper authorities and agencies in hopes that it can avoid a brewing issue or problem, or even report on something that has not been reported previously for the purpose of a further investigation. One important thing to note is that it can only scan public information, blogs and posts.
In addition, the system also gives students and residents the ability to anonymously report on potentially dangerous or serious issues via text, voicemail or email.
As social media continues to grow in all age groups and information is freely distributed, it has also been an avenue for people and students to talk about incidents at school or in the workplace that many would not feel comfortable talking about in person and this hi-tech solution could assist in finding out about problems before they become bigger problems or potentially dangerous situations.
The cost of the one year trial is being paid by the Scotts Valley Police Department’s asset seizure funds, the Scotts Valley School District and the Santa Cruz County Office of Education.
For more information including videos on how the technology works, you can visit: