Barcodes are used every day for a variety of reasons; there are retail barcodes, barcode labels, asset labels and even sometimes barcodes on the post. However, of late there has been a shift in the kind of people that are using barcodes. Rather than only being useful to businesses and shops there has been a recent hype in the use of barcodes in technology.
Recently the West Midlands Police have been urging people to download pictures of wanted criminals in their area. To do this they have been using large square barcodes which are printed on posters that are displayed around the local area. These can be scanned by any smart phone, this enables the user to then see a library of pictures of the suspects’ faces.
The West Midlands Police have stated that they hope that when the new barcode system is put in place officially, and people are familiar with how to use it, they have confidence in the fact that it will dramatically reduce the time it takes them to make an arrest.
This type of security barcode helps the police to involve the public without the knowledge of the criminals. This is a new approach on the old ‘WANTED’ system, and the criminals are therefore less likely to try to avoid certain areas.