Ever since the riots that swept the UK in August there's been much debate and hand-wringing over what should be done with social media sites during times of unrest, with the government even threatening to shut down sites like Twitter.

Thankfully, Thersea May and co. seem to have come to their senses and said they will not be seeking additional powers to block sites. There was a timely reminder that these services can benefit law enforcement agencies on Thursday when it was revealed that over 600 police officers are now on Twitter.

Speaking at a Westminster Forum event, Paul Reilly, a lecturer in media and communications at the University of Leicester, noted that since the riots the number of police officers on Twitter had grown to 632.

"Every territorial force now has a Twitter feed as part of steps being taken to use this tool to engage and provide accurate information and stop rumours circulating," he added.

"Police in Northern Ireland have been particularly proactive in the use of social media and received praise for this and other forces are using these tools more effectively now but there has been a degree of caution among some too."

He added that this number had grown significantly since the riots as more officers out on the streets look for ways to engage with their community.

Furthermore, not only does Twitter offer engagement but it also offers a wealth of information that police forces can access, as Justin Crump, the chief executive of security intelligence consultancy firm Sibylline, explained.

"Social media is open source intelligence on steroids. It moves at a hell of a pace and can be very biased and you have to be very disciplined to deal with it but if you integrate people, processes and technology you can gain benefits," he said.

Indeed, V3 spoke with South Yorkshire Police in October who are using Twitter to increase engagement with the community and track potential disturbances, as police across the land prove that shutting down social media sites would be a disastrous decision.

Police have raised the prospect of adding cyber crime data to the online crime map introduced so successfully earlier this year on the Home Office's police.uk web site.

Speaking at the London Conference on Cyberspace last week was chair of the police.uk delivery board and policing, policy and practice service director at the National Policing Agency, Steve Mortimore.

He explained that the site, which has racked up over 430 million page hits since launch, has shown the "huge public appetite" for "this sort of information".

"Although there's nothing planned at present in our dialogue with government ministers it would be possible for cyber crime to be shown on our web site as a separate category," he said.

"We could profile cyber crime to street level, it would be victim based and anonymised...but it's something that could be considered."

However, there are some issues about how to define cyber crime and what would the source of the crime data would be, he added.

It may not be feasible at the moment to get accurate stats on cyber crime, but if the suggestion eventually turns into reality it could help get the message out about the extent of cyber crime and remind the public to remain vigilant online.

Cyber crime has for so long been considered a white collar crime and not even really worthy of investigation, on a small scale, by the police that the fact they are even talking about including this kind of information in their open data drive is encouraging.

Visually representing this kind of crime on a map would be another welcome step on the road to restoring some kind of parity with more traditional crime.

As London braces for a possible fourth night of violence, the local MP for Tottenham, where rioting first erupted on Saturday, has apparently called for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) to be shut down this evening to disrupt the plans of would-be rioters.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, David Lammy said that the service is helping the rioters to organise themselves in a way that leaves the police constantly one step behind.

The point has been made before, and holds some truth given that BBM's encrypted messages effectively give the looters a private social network to communicate without fear of surveillance.

Twitter has also been blamed for helping groups to co-ordinate their efforts in an agile and dynamic way, although the authorities, of course, are technically able to monitor these communications.

It remains to be seen whether shutting BBM would actually do much to dent the success of the rioters. Some have suggested, in fact, that mobile operators could already be complying with the authorities to allow access to mobile data.

If this is true, and if RIM complies in decrypting the messages, it could be better to keep the service up and running to monitor messages and catch those responsible.