When your internet-rapper friend wants you to check out his SoundCloud.
Terrible idea indeed. Such a system would sooner or later be overloaded with gangsters taking advantage of the situation themselves and with a town mob getting random targets by people that have found an alternative to
swatting.
Certainly plausible. Something like this has plenty of capacity to go wrong, badly.
Actually, this wouldn't work in New Orleans (or any place with a no-snitch culture, for that matter). Just being around the scene of a crime (big or small) while it's happening increases your chances of getting shot exponentially, but getting caught by the perpetrator might guarantee that.
I think such a system with such a name would be illegal in most European countries anyway, aren't there laws against vigilantism in the USA too?
Legally, this app/network isn't vigilantism. If the people part of this network are using this app in the manner advertised, then they're not actually getting involved in the crime (in fact, that's one of the app's rules). In the case of the depicted assault, that's not vigilantism. It could very easily escalate and become vigilantism, however. Either way, this app/network is tight-roping a very thin line.
Addressing your question, yeah vigilantism is illegal in USA, even though the loosened self-defense laws in open-carry state makes vigilantism harder to prove in court. Even so, vigilantism in many cases not involving death is either hard to prove or slap-on-the-wrist worthy. If someone with a gun sticks up a grocery store in, say, Germany, and two brave souls crack his kneecaps, would that be considered vigilantism?
