"Dropping a dime" on the bad guys is entering the 21st century in Boston, where the police department has begun a program allowing informants to SMS [1] their tips to detectives. Making a voice call is far more noticeable than quickly typing a text message, and younger citizens (the target of the campaign) are, by far, the heaviest users of SMS. A Verisign [2] server sitting in the middle of the transaction makes the message anonymous while getting the message through quickly enough to stop some crimes in progress. New York and Los Angeles public safety officials have experimented with SMS to 911 dispatchers, but Boston is the first to take text messaging quite so far.

For more on SMS tips:
- read the article at Wireless Week [3]