Explosion at the Boston Marathon.

phiwum said:
I had not heard about the second car until the CNN interview with the Watertown chief. I assume that the Times article was written before that interview, and was working off the common (and apparently incorrect) information at the time.

But, yeah, it's still very hard to know what happened.

I was happy to have it settled how they came to know the identity of the suspects. Nothing to do with internet guesswork (of course), but also nothing to do with friends of the suspects! It all came down to fingerprints after the shootout.

There were (from my limited perspective) so many opportunities for these guys to have escaped. First, they could've skipped town before the anticipated release of photos. But also, as the article points out, simply not dropping off the SUV owner in-town would have bought them considerable time. And who knows how and why the killing of the MIT officer occurred?

The whole ending to this episode really was bizarre.
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It was a night of chaos; no wonder the reporting of it contains different and possibly conflicting elements. The Washington Post reports that the FBI tip line got many calls after the photos were released on Thursday (including from the brothers' aunt), and the fingerprinting of Tamerlan Tsarnaev was confirmation of his identity.

The same Post article has some other interesting things to report on the sifting of the photos and videos and the decision to release images:

In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials. Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.

[...]

Investigators were concerned that if they didn’t assert control over the release of the Tsarnaevs’ photos, their manhunt would become a chaotic free-for-all, with news media cars and helicopters, as well as online vigilante detectives, competing with police in the chase to find the suspects. By stressing that all information had to flow to 911 and official investigators, the FBI hoped to cut off that freelance sleuthing and attend to public safety even as they searched for the brothers.
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This Huffington Post article indicates that the FBI tip line had a huge response after the release of the photos:

Three days later, when the FBI released images of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, Leonard used the time stamp shown on them to narrow his search of the hundreds of photos he had taken that day. He realized that he, too, had photos of the faces of the two men authorities were searching for.
[...]
After combing the digital images, he was sure he had something the FBI could use. He tried to upload them to an FBI site that it had asked the public to use. Then he called the hotline number and was on hold for about 40 minutes, the response was so overwhelming. He finally got an FBI spokesman, who told him to upload them to another site. Within 20 minutes, someone from the Department of Homeland Security called him back.

Link
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Magenta said:
It was a night of chaos; no wonder the reporting of it contains different and possibly conflicting elements. The Washington Post reports that the FBI tip line got many calls after the photos were released on Thursday (including from the brothers' aunt), and the fingerprinting of Tamerlan Tsarnaev was confirmation of his identity.

The same Post article has some other interesting things to report on the sifting of the photos and videos and the decision to release images:
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The photos released on Thursday were the "blurry" ones. Turns out they were enough to convince the aunt to call and identify them.

And the physical identity was ascertained by fingerprinting.

So it seems the only thing the "Internet sleuths" really accomplished was force the FBI try and clean up the mess they were making.
 
Checkmite said:
The photos released on Thursday were the "blurry" ones. Turns out they were enough to convince the aunt to call and identify them.

And the physical identity was ascertained by fingerprinting.
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It appears so.

Checkmite said:
So it seems the only thing the "Internet sleuths" really accomplished was force the FBI try and clean up the mess they were making.
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Yes, I'm not seeing that anything positive was achieved by the internet sleuths. It's not good enough to say, as some have, that errors can be corrected later. A lot of that stuff, especially the naming of names but also the singling out of "suspicious looking" people in the crowd, should never have been posted in the first place. *None* of the people singled out in the 4Chan photos as looking or behaving suspiciously had anything to do with bombing.

Some or all of these articles have been posted before, but bear reposting in one place for future reference:

All the Mistakenly Identified ‘Suspects’ in the Boston Bombing Investigation

It Wasn't Sunil Tripathi: The Anatomy of a Misinformation Disaster

The Internet's shameful false ID

ETA: Salah Eddin Barhoum, Boston Teen Stunned To Be Portrayed As Bombing Suspect
 
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Magenta said:
It appears so.



Yes, I'm not seeing that anything positive was achieved by the internet sleuths. It's not good enough to say, as some have, that errors can be corrected later. A lot of that stuff, especially the naming of names but also the singling out of "suspicious looking" people in the crowd, should never have been posted in the first place. *None* of the people singled out in the 4Chan photos as looking or behaving suspiciously had anything to do with bombing.

Some or all of these articles have been posted before, but bear reposting in one place for future reference:

All the Mistakenly Identified ‘Suspects’ in the Boston Bombing Investigation

It Wasn't Sunil Tripathi: The Anatomy of a Misinformation Disaster

The Internet's shameful false ID
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So you think we should end freedom of speech, repeal the 1st Amendment?
 
Magenta said:
Yes, I'm not seeing that anything positive was achieved by the internet sleuths. It's not good enough to say, as some have, that errors can be corrected later. A lot of that stuff, especially the naming of names but also the singling out of "suspicious looking" people in the crowd, should never have been posted in the first place. *None* of the people singled out in the 4Chan photos as looking or behaving suspiciously had anything to do with bombing.

Some or all of these articles have been posted before, but bear reposting in one place for future reference:

All the Mistakenly Identified ‘Suspects’ in the Boston Bombing Investigation

It Wasn't Sunil Tripathi: The Anatomy of a Misinformation Disaster

The Internet's shameful false ID
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Thanks.
 
dropzone said:
And why is it that the former USSR and Warsaw Pact are so full of woo? I was a kid when Sputnik went up and we were told how far ahead of us commie kids our age were in science and math, but I'm not seeing it.
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This is deserves a thread of its own. However, to be brief, the poorest regions of the USSR were those regions in Asia. Many of the republics held bitter resentment toward Russia, which erupted after the collapse of the USSR. The region where this was most pronounced was the Caucus Mountains. Radical Islam exploded in southern Russia after the USSR collapse.
 
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WildCat said:
And if that doesn't stop them (and it certainly won't)?
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On this forum, I would hope that we are capable of learning lessons from this case. On the more widely-quoted sites, perhaps the only thing that might stop them is if there are consequences for them (in the form of litigation).
 
Magenta said:
Are you referring to something in particular?
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Current discussion. There's not much difference between public on internet and not on internet.
Although it seems media need to slow down, as many problems arose when they reported unverified facts from comments. Before social networks this problem wasn't apparent, because forums and blogs weren't on radar for media and police hotlines were private.

It can often be self correcting, when wrong information gets eliminated, but it needs to occur before media reports on it.

Short: Social networks can be useful, but they need to be handled carefully as any other source of (mis)information.
 
Magenta said:
On this forum, I would hope that we are capable of learning lessons from this case. On the more widely-quoted sites, perhaps the only thing that might stop them is if there are consequences for them (in the form of litigation).
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What sort of consequences? What sort of litigation?
 
Shrinker said:
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Regarding the behaviour if the FBI. They caught both suspects. You have no idea how at this stage. They may already have had their names when they released the photos. Bear in mind what was advertised as a manhunt was also an evidence hunt. The FBI need to keep back evidence for the trial and only release the bare minimum. You're assuming way too much, and drawing conclusions too earliy. Classic CT.
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Did the FBI catch both suspects? I think in both cases it was the Boston Police who did the shooting/catching.

Perhaps you meant it was the FBI that solved the case. But did they? The investigation team seemed to be made up of more than the FBI, so giving the FBI sole credit doesn't seem right, and even if you meant it was the authorities and not the FBI as the sole entity responsible for the capture/shooting of the suspects it doesn't seem quite right to give the authorities sole credit for the success of this operation. The guy with his legs blown off provided them with a pretty big clue when he regained consciousness and I'd give some credit to the guy who found suspect #2 in his boat and called authorities.

Perhaps your point was that the authorities together with support from various citizens caught both suspects, but without any help from the various internet investigations that materialized. You might be right about that, but even there I'm not sure you were right. What was the process that led to the release of better resolution pictures of the suspects and did the better resolution pictures play any role in their capture?
 
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