I'm OK with him being detained until January or so, just to be on the safe side.

I'd be really interested to hear what intelligence officers think of crowdsourcing efforts like what's going on at Reddit.

On the one hand, some of the stuff that the internet community has done is really impressive. They were able to narrow down the model of the pressure cooker super quick, for example, and that seems like something that wouldn't have unintended consequences.

On the other hand, there are some things like the Where's Waldo find-the-bomber stuff that certainly could have unintended consequences.

I mean, there's a reason why the FBI keeps some things private and makes other things public, right? I wonder if they will be more/less likely to make things public in future cases like this.

4chan just doesn't get the respect it deserves. Reddit jumped into the fray after 4chan, please stop CNNing up the comments.

What if somebody who sees that picture from reddit recognizes that dude with white cap IRL, goes into hero mode and does something to him.... and later it's found that's not the right guy?

I'm with you there, Jake.

Don't get me wrong, I love the internet, and I believe community effort, or "Crowdsourcing" can lead to incredible results. 2+2 and the AP/UB cases are a prime example.

There's two sides to each and every coin, though. People need to be incredibly critical when "investigating" source material obtained from the internet for example. Otherwise their well-intended efforts may lead to nothing at best, and to unwarranted witch hunts and destroyed lives at worst.

collateral damage



jking


after 9/11 there was a machete attach in Texas because a sheik was wearing a turban, ignorant people are going to do ignorant things

Westboro Baptist Church trolling


Anonymous trolls back by brandjacking on Facebook

Surley they aren't so stupid...

AP is reporting that its source is sticking by the news that a suspect was arrested.

Did the AP say which NY Post writer their source was?

And the internet is not reliable. It has reports in every which direction. CNN has been an embarrassment on this story.

No country identified so not the Post.

I think the post said 12 suspects are in custody.

The problem with the crowdsourcing effort is that the approach is completely wrong. Identifying "suspicious-looking" people is dumb because all of the public stills combined represent just a few time points in a span from two hours before the explosions to a few minutes afterward. The perp(s) is unlikely to appear in those shots, especially since most of the snapshots are clustered at exactly two hours prior or minutes after.

The crowd would be much better at identifying things that can be positively identified, like backpack models, pressure cookers, Fox zippers, or even specific individuals (i.e. Where's Waldo as opposed to Who's Waldo? Maybe that suspicious looking guy!). Even organizing and sorting all of the pictures into some kind of easily-accessible interface would have been much more productive than guessing which creepster looked guilty.

Criticism of media doing dumb speculatory and barely sourced reporting is one thing, but 4chan and reddit are scouring through publicly available documents trying to put together a giant puzzle and you cannot really stop them in any way and even if you criticise it you wont achieve much of anything either.

It is also a huge what if to start at "4chan is scouring through photos and for once it isnt of underage girls on facebook" and end up several links in a chain down contemplating someone being seriously hurt or killed because someone saw those photos on the internet.

If they start posting the info of these guys on the internet I will be the first in line with the pitchforks and torches for them doing something ridiculously dumb but this isnt that and it is an overreaction at this point imo.

Holy ****. CNN has photo of that brown bag INSIDE the gate a bit before the photo of it outside the gate.


Prayin on my pony.

Branch accepted.

Those people are such sick pieces of ****. Hope a ****ing meteor drops from the sky and crushes their church.

MSNBC the biggest ****up today. Look at what Pete Williams said on the air during the CNN/AP/Boston Globe brouhaha about the arrest/non-arrest.

"From the beginning of this, this has been the hallmark of this story — information going in totally different directions coming from normally very reliable sources. We can't just flip a coin on this."

At 2:15 on MSNBC, Williams said that "at the end of the day, somebody is going to be right, because every news organization is reporting something different."

WTF WHY ARE YOU ADVOCATING RESTRAINT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT'S NOT HOW THE NEWS WORKS GTFO THE AIR

NBC really missed an opportunity here. At no point did they announce that anyone had been arrested or detained in the investigation, which means they missed an opportunity for a retraction.

If I wanted to sit around and not receive baseless speculation reported as fact, I'd watch the Weather Channel.

Bill Hemmer on fox news just reported that he saw pics of the two people FBI are looking for. They match the description including color of clothing of individuals posted earlier:

Doesn't match those two IMO

Boston Globe screenshot sums things media coverage the last few days pretty nicely:

http://i.imgur.com/M98lmfj.png

CNN ****ed with people bad today.

I go drink for an hour and now an explosion in Waco? jfc

Lol.