Here is a recent article from NewsWeek that shows just how important Web 2.0 blogs and social networks are becoming to law enforcement and legal professionals when conducting investigations. Law enforcement officials are increasingly turning to social network sites like MySpace and FaceBook to help solve crimes and bring wrongdoers to justice.

From the article —

Meet the point-and-click police. A growing number of ordinary officers are working a new beat, turning to MySpace—an online network of individuals linked through personalized home pages—to collect clues and crack offline cases.

Communication between cops and the two-year-old company has surged this year, with MySpace now contributing to about 150 investigations a month, according to Jason Feffer, its vice president for operations. That’s due in large part to the site’s size and substance. A searchable, public scrapbook of images, affiliations and written exchanges, it offers detectives raw data on 70 million potential suspects, witnesses or victims (Facebook.com has also served as a source of info, though it is limited to users on college campuses).

You can read the entire article @ Walking a New Beat.