Explosion at the Boston Marathon.

davefoc said:
There is another issue here that is on the periphery of the internet sleuth issue. It looks to me like the authorities might have sat on important information, driven perhaps by their self interest biases in being able to independently bring the bad guys in. There were arguments for sitting on the information but I think they were outweighed by benefit of getting the pictures out and getting suspects identified as fast as possible. This is, of course uninformed speculation on my part, and I could easily change my mind if I became aware of more information on this. But to the degree that the internet sleuths drove the authorities to get the images out, I think they did, in net, a good thing.
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Two comments: the apparent immediate result of publicizing the photos was the killed officer, the carjacking, the shootout and so on. I don't know what the alternative would have been, but it sure isn't obvious to me that the publication of the photos led to a great outcome.

And second, even if it did, I won't say that this means the sleuths did a good thing. If we take the FBI statements at face value, they were so concerned with the harm (or potential harm?) of the online speculation that they released the photos earlier than they otherwise would have. Even if this was a good outcome, it doesn't mean that the sleuths did a good thing.

But, I agree that, by and large, our opinions are not so far apart.
 
phiwum said:
Probably most persons identified by online sleuths as potential [bombers] suffered only negligible harm.
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Is there one who suffered more than negligible harm?

phiwum said:
But there's also a difference in responsibility. The police are supposed to find suspects. Inevitably, they will sometimes question an innocent person. That person suffers more harm than, say, those identified by internet sleuths, but if the police are doing their job well, then they have done no wrong. We recognize that this is their duty, and it's inevitable that sometimes, even when cops are performing their duties well, innocent persons are questioned or even tried.

The armchair sleuths had no similar responsibilities. I don't doubt that they meant well (though perhaps were also motivated by a desire for glory or at least self-satisfaction), but the fact is that when they publicly made accusations that turned out to be mistaken, we should be less ready to forgive them than we forgive police, because their accusations are gratuitous.
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I couldn't disagree more.

The police should be held to a higher standard than the armchair sleuths for several reasons. Their accusations have the ears of prosecuting attorneys if they're made in the courthouse. Their suspicions can be backed with the power to detain at a minimum, with the scale going up to arrest and even execute pretty quickly. They need to be more certain, and thus more circumspect, with their accusations.

The public speculations of armchair sleuths are not backed by the power and authority of the state. I understand that mistakes can be made, especially in the fog of field work, but also when one has time to calmly reflect on the evidence and discuss it with one's peers and superiors. I think mistakes can be forgiven, if they're honest misunderstandings and not vendettas, and if the person who made the mistake honestly acknowledges it.

But if there's going to be a double standard here (and I think there should be) I definitely think we should hold the public officials to whom we cede so much power to the higher one.
 
The New York Times published an article today, retracing the movements of Dzhokhar and Tamerlane Tsarnaev after the Boston Marathon bombing. Link Little is known about Tamerlane Tsarnaev -- he supposedly went to the supermarket that night -- because he was unemployed and mostly stayed home.

More is known about his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Five hours after the bombing Dzhokhar tweeted, “Ain’t no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people.” Four hours later
he “favorited,” or bookmarked, a post on Twitter that had appeared at 1:20 a.m.: 'The sad part about the events in Boston today, is that some bs Hollywood director is gonna try n make a movie n profit from tragic events."
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The following day at
5:09 p.m., he called out what he believed was a fake story circulating on the Internet about a man who was going to propose to a woman at the marathon only to discover she was among the victims. “Fake” he wrote to the Twitter account that had shared that post.
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Tuesday night he returned to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus. Some of his classmates spoke with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev about the bombing. They said he called it 'sad and a tragedy.'

Thursday at 5PM was when the FBI released the photos identified as Suspect No. 1 and Suspect No.2. Around 9 PM a friend emailed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev an attachment of the photo and wrote:
Lol...Is this you? I didn’t know you went to the marathon!!!!
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phiwum said:
Two comments: the apparent immediate result of publicizing the photos was the killed officer, the carjacking, the shootout and so on. I don't know what the alternative would have been, but it sure isn't obvious to me that the publication of the photos led to a great outcome.
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Nor I. It is impossible to know what the consequences of the road not traveled are.

Still, an act this ruthless implies that another one is likely to follow unless the perpetrators are caught quickly. It is also likely that if there was foreign involvement that the perpetrators could get out of the country fairly quickly and any hope of catching them would be lost without a quick identification. Of course, balanced against those risks are risks of a false identification and the provoking of an immediate act of violence by the perpetrators that could have been avoided if they had not been publically identified.

One other issue here that argues for an earlier release of the pictures than what occurred. The perpetrators of this crime would have needed to have been complete idiots to think they wouldn't be identified pretty quickly and they might very well be acting like they had been identified anyway. In the case of these two guys, it does seem like they were complete idiots and thought that they wouldn't be identified. But still, the thinking ability of these two guys does seem to be somewhat below the norm for your average terrorist.

And second, even if it did, I won't say that this means the sleuths did a good thing. If we take the FBI statements at face value, they were so concerned with the harm (or potential harm?) of the online speculation that they released the photos earlier than they otherwise would have. Even if this was a good outcome, it doesn't mean that the sleuths did a good thing.

But, I agree that, by and large, our opinions are not so far apart.
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Yeah, I was surprised that the authorities listed the internet sleuths as a reason for releasing the images. I wasn't sure it was a factual statement and I agree that giving the internet sleuths credit for something that was incidental to their main activity is a stretch even if the connection is correct.
 
newyorkguy said:
The New York Times published an article today, retracing the movements of Dzhokhar and Tamerlane Tsarnaev after the Boston Marathon bombing. Link
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The context which is unclear to the New York Times seems pretty clear to me. Suspect #2 tweeting to a friend who has since deleted his account says

"What’s new with them?"

and two minutes later

"and they what “god hates dead people?” Or victims of tragedies? Lol those people are cooked"

Sounds like they're discussing WBC's announced plan to picket in Boston.
 
Anyone with a working brain could see Remie didn't mean literally everyone. Come on, it's pure pedantry.
 
Morrigan said:
Anyone with a working brain could see Remie didn't mean literally everyone. Come on, it's pure pedantry.
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Almost no one who says "everyone" means literally everyone, but most people who say "everyone" mean most people.

Since it would be a gross exaggeration even to say that most people were accusing Tripathi of being Suspect #2, I don't think it's pure pedantry to ask the person who made the claim to dial it down.

ETA: OTOH, since it was immediately dialed down to "so many", continuing to argue the issue at that point was pedantic.
 
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zeggman said:
Sounds like they're discussing WBC's announced plan to picket in Boston.
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Could be.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sounds so non-unusual. If only he would've said to his brother:
Go to the Marathon and do what now? Seriously?
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He'd be in school, his brother would be alive (as would three other people) and a bunch of people would still have both their legs. :(
 
Morrigan said:
Anyone with a working brain could see Remie didn't mean literally everyone. Come on, it's pure pedantry.
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There is no doubt that she didn't mean literally everyone as you have pedantically pointed out. The issue was did it fall within the expected range of hyperbole for this kind of thing. I thought JihadJane was right to point out that it not only wasn't everyone, it just wasn't that common. Was it 1 in 10 of the people participating in this thread? Maybe it was closer to 1 in a 100. Overall not only not everyone, but not that common. And if one looks at the population as a whole it was a minuscule percentage and if one looks at the population of internet sleuths it was still a very uncommon action. So regardless of what population the term, everyone, might have been meant to refer to it was such a gross exaggeration that it would be reasonable to say it was just wrong by any measure.

And if one makes a distinction between accusing somebody and suggesting the possibility that somebody might have done it, It might not only be uncommon, it might be very hard to find a single example where somebody said that he was the bomber.
 
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zeggman said:
Is there one who suffered more than negligible harm?


I couldn't disagree more.

The police should be held to a higher standard than the armchair sleuths for several reasons. Their accusations have the ears of prosecuting attorneys if they're made in the courthouse. Their suspicions can be backed with the power to detain at a minimum, with the scale going up to arrest and even execute pretty quickly. They need to be more certain, and thus more circumspect, with their accusations.

The public speculations of armchair sleuths are not backed by the power and authority of the state. I understand that mistakes can be made, especially in the fog of field work, but also when one has time to calmly reflect on the evidence and discuss it with one's peers and superiors. I think mistakes can be forgiven, if they're honest misunderstandings and not vendettas, and if the person who made the mistake honestly acknowledges it.

But if there's going to be a double standard here (and I think there should be) I definitely think we should hold the public officials to whom we cede so much power to the higher one.
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I dealt with this.

There are (at least) two orthogonal components in judging the wrong one does by an unwarranted accusation.

First, there is the harm done to the accused. Clearly, the police tend to do more harm when they accuse the wrong person.

Second, there is the degree to which accusations are the responsibility of the party accusing. Online sleuths have no such responsibility at all. They are idly killing time (in the worst case) or trying to contribute to the police investigation, though with little influence (in the best case). In this respect, we should be less ready to forgive the online sleuths when they make an unwarranted accusation.

There are, of course, other components, such as to what extent the evidence at hand makes the accusation plausible, and so on. But in the post you replied to, I was dealing only with these two components.
 
phiwum said:
I dealt with this.

There are (at least) two orthogonal components in judging the wrong one does by an unwarranted accusation.

First, there is the harm done to the accused. Clearly, the police tend to do more harm when they accuse the wrong person.

Second, there is the degree to which accusations are the responsibility of the party accusing. Online sleuths have no such responsibility at all. They are idly killing time (in the worst case) or trying to contribute to the police investigation, though with little influence (in the best case). In this respect, we should be less ready to forgive the online sleuths when they make an unwarranted accusation.

There are, of course, other components, such as to what extent the evidence at hand makes the accusation plausible, and so on. But in the post you replied to, I was dealing only with these two components.
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So since the harm to all involved was "negligible" there's really nothing to forgive.

If an armchair sleuth is accusing someone with a volley of small-arms fire, I agree we should be slow to forgive.

The worst thing that happened in this case was the misidentification of a missing student as Suspect #2. From everything I saw, the same open discussion which spread the speculation far and wide also quickly tamped down its credibility.

I don't see "not their responsibility" as a reasonable basis for limiting involvement. It wasn't anyone's responsibility to intervene when Kitty Genovese was murdered. It isn't anyone's responsibility to call the authorities if they see a suspicious package on the subway, or someone who looks like a wanted fugitive. I would rather encourage people to err on the side of involvement than reinforce the apathy and inertia which are already all too common. To me, that includes discussing them responsibly on social media.
 
Without actually being one of the falsely accused, or being close to them, how the hell can you state with any certainty how bad he has it due to this ordeal?

you can't. You have no idea.
 
“Lol...” the friend wrote. “Is this you? I didn’t know you went to the marathon!!!!”
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Kestrel said:
That might have been my first response.
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Me too, probably. Because I have seen wanted photos that look exactly like someone I know, a friend, a co-worker. But you laugh, it seems like a joke, because you know, it's not them, it can't be.

Only this time it was.

Like the owner of the auto shop where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev demanded his car before it was ready. He said Tsarnaev was acting very strange, very weird, very nervous. They asked him, "Did you connect it with the Marathon bombing?"

Understandably he said, no, not at all. The thought never crossed his mind.
 
NoahFence said:
Without actually being one of the falsely accused, or being close to them, how the hell can you state with any certainty how bad he has it due to this ordeal?

you can't. You have no idea.
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I am sorry, but at this point I have a hard time digging up a lot of tears for someone who had something bad about them said over the Internet. Especially when it was corrected a day or two later. It's not exactly the crime of the century after all.
 
zeggman said:
So since the harm to all involved was "negligible" there's really nothing to forgive.

If an armchair sleuth is accusing someone with a volley of small-arms fire, I agree we should be slow to forgive.

The worst thing that happened in this case was the misidentification of a missing student as Suspect #2. From everything I saw, the same open discussion which spread the speculation far and wide also quickly tamped down its credibility.
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The harm that suspicion caused the family of the missing student was far from negligible.

I don't see "not their responsibility" as a reasonable basis for limiting involvement. It wasn't anyone's responsibility to intervene when Kitty Genovese was murdered. It isn't anyone's responsibility to call the authorities if they see a suspicious package on the subway, or someone who looks like a wanted fugitive. I would rather encourage people to err on the side of involvement than reinforce the apathy and inertia which are already all too common. To me, that includes discussing them responsibly on social media.
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Not at all the same.

In Genovese's case (if we take for granted that persons understood there was a woman in mortal danger, which is somewhat controversial), it is clear that any one person could, through small effort, have a large chance of saving a life. This fact is enough to suggest that each person had an actual, moral responsibility to contribute.

The armchair sleuths were not in a similar situation. They may have had delusions of contributing to the prevention of later crimes, but this did not (directly) happen -- nor was it likely to happen, in my opinion. They were idly speculating when there were professionals already investigating. Furthermore, publicly speculating about the guilt of persons on extraordinarily flimsy evidence is likely to cause harm, and this is relevant in determining whether one has a duty to do so.

Really, the Genovese bystanders (assuming that the myth is accepted at face value) are not at all in a similar situation.
 
Kestrel said:
I am sorry, but at this point I have a hard time digging up a lot of tears for someone who had something bad about them said over the Internet. Especially when it was corrected a day or two later. It's not exactly the crime of the century after all.
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Yeah. Screw the Tipathis if they can't take a joke.

I'm with you, man.
 
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