What happens when you give 4chan images of the Boston Marathon?

http://basedheisenberg.tumblr.com/post/48181500129/what-happens-when-you-give-4chan-images-of-the-boston

by caffeinewriter • 13 years ago

546 284 13 years ago

basedheisenberg.tumblr.com

Aurel1us• 13 years ago

Some people but their bag on the ground between the legs cause they are tired.

gojomo• 13 years ago

And, the lighting/angle/resolution in the later two pics don't allow a strong read, at least to my eyes, as to whether the backpack is still being carried. (Zooming in didn't help me get any more confidence either way... perhaps the originals, motivating this claim, are of higher resolution or less-compression than this collage?)

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if photos like these, and crowdsourced examination, does generate actionable leads.

tagabek• 13 years ago

Wow, if this leads to the bomber being caught, then that is amazing.

This truly goes for most large online communities that I have seen. They all have their negative aspects, but this is an example of the combined efforts reaching a productive conclusion.

panacea• 13 years ago

I'm seeing people putting red circles around dark skinned people wearing suspicious clothing.

wjk2• 13 years ago

On the 2nd picture he has sunglasses, but not on the 1st or 3rd...? Completely different guy ?

joewee• 13 years ago

You can't tell if he is wearing the sunglasses in the other shots. And the likelihood of two sets of guys walking around fitting the same description?

anigbrowl9• 13 years ago

I think the likelihood of two guys with white baseball caps at a crowded event in the USA is actually pretty high.

EDIT: after finding the higher-resolution photos, it's almost certainly the same 2 guys in each pic. On the other hand, the descriptors label him/them as moving, when my impression is that they're just standing there. Worthy of study, sure, but pretty weak sauce by itself.

whbk• 13 years ago

He has them on in all three pictures, can tell in the hi-res pictures posted here: http://imgur.com/a/fGxIR

VLM5• 13 years ago

Something that I'm curious about is the officially release pixs show it used RC car stuff. Some official newspaper type places are already claiming it was a lone-gunman scenario for no apparent reason. Whats never explained is how a dude carrying two backpacks plus another backpack of short range RC car transmitters wasn't noticed carrying three bulky bags and crossing the street to plant both.

Also where did the dude go to use two bulky RC car transmitters to set off the bombs? Can't be far away. Portapotties? Look for one with two RC car transmitters dropped in them? I would imagine that would help with DNA analysis too, having 1000s of peoples samples in there.

So the vigilantes need to find pix of the portapotties, which I suspect were within a a hundred feet of the blasts. In fact their location combined with the predicted blast size probably defined where the blasts happened as the bombers would want to be just outta range of the blast while still having a great RC car signal.

TLDR is the witch hunt should be searching for two guys with bulky backpacks and one guy with a weirdly shaped pack who left the portapotties with a much smaller backpack right after the two booms.

jgrahamc• 13 years ago

Or that could be Richard Jewell.

jaredsohn2• 13 years ago

More speculation on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/findbostonbombers

Collaborative Google Doc for list of suspects: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AgtCl8YvqiBodEl0...

Raw collections of photos: http://www.reddit.com/r/findbostonbombers/comments/1cipl7/ph...

IRC Channel: ##bostonspeculation

Closer up view of person in OP (includes shot of face): http://i.imgur.com/BBxplgk.jpg

Checking out the speculation is valuable because it gives the perspective that many such leads exist (and it is unlikely that they are all in on it.)

Uchikoma2• 13 years ago

I wish for you the guy is not innocent and you're co-responsible for destroying his life.

jaredsohn2• 13 years ago

I have requested that the link to the photo is removed (too late for me to edit/delete the post).

bargl6• 13 years ago

If he is not innocent then you wouldn't be responsible for destroying anything... because then he'd be guilty and you'd be responsible for finding the murderer.

But I think what uchikoma was trying to say is that you may be ruining the life of an innocent man and that's not cool.

VMG• 13 years ago

Doesn't look too good. The subreddit is busy circling everybody with a backpack and the google doc doesn't even get the blast site right.

Lost_BiomedE• 13 years ago

The shot of face, also shows that he still has a bag, correcting the claim in OP's post.

Also note, the blown apart backpack image has been desaturated because the color is way off (again OP post).

Shivetya• 13 years ago

from a reddit thread on Richard Jewel

The Umbrella Man at Dealey Plaza, which shows how anything can look odd when scrutinized to an extreme http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuoZWb9gqv0

rkuykendall-com• 13 years ago

That was absolutely beautiful.

bluetidepro• 13 years ago

I love this video and the story of "The Umbrella Man." This is a perfect example of quantum coincidences.

bernardom• 13 years ago

Thank you for sharing that. That was a fantastic short film.

Alex3917• 13 years ago

I love how the girl standing behind him is also wearing a black backpack but isn't circled.

ck25• 13 years ago

It would be great if this helped but I sure hope "the internet" doesn't decide it's someone who turns out to be the wrong person, because the vigilantes will not stop even if the discovery is "corrected".

The media did that with the Atlanta bombing and it destroyed a guy's life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell

nostromo• 13 years ago

Or more recently Steven Hatfill from the 2001 anthrax attacks.

ck25• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hatfill

Or even more recently Ryan Lanza at Sandy Hook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lanza#Investigation

The media doesn't learn and doesn't care to learn.

officemonkey2• 13 years ago

It wasn't the media that decided that Richard Jewell and Steven Hatfill were "persons of interest," it was the FBI.

With recent news about someone "watching a race while brown" (an injured Saudi's home is searched while he's being treated for injuries) I don't hold a lot of hope for accurate and careful policing.

kjackson2012• 13 years ago

Of course this is helping. They aren't convicting anyone, they are tracking down leads. I'm sure the police would be engaging in this exact same exercise if they had the manpower. Luckily, there are hundreds or thousands of motivated volunteers who are willing to sift through this data and hopefully something really good is in there.

brazzy2• 13 years ago

The problem is that if those "leads" are made public and point at specific people, then some people will let their outrage over what happened blot out all doubt that the "leads" are not conclusive evidence and take what they believe to be justice into their own hands.

sdoering4• 13 years ago

They are publicly "accusing" (or putting somebody in a very specific corner) two guys. They do not have any, any idea, what has really happened.

They are nothing more than unethical algorithmic drones, that dig up stuff. So far, no problem. But when showing their findings in public, they have a responsibility in thinking through the possible consequences, that might arise for these two guys if the (with a by the way very high probability) are innocent.

So raising the internet-pillories with possible media outlets taking these images and (not fact checking) showing them in different channels, might just destroy lives.

So yeah, sit in your chair and believe this unethical bs about them not convicting anybody. Right, the internet is just a tool.

As wise Uncle Ben once said: "With great power comes great responsibility."

That is, what seems to be missing here.

ps.: Imagine a different scenario:

They dig up these images, they send it to the law enforcement agencies. They find these guys to be potential suspects. They get a fair trial. After all is said and done . These guys come out to show what they did. Something in the line of finding a security flaw at your favorite digital place.

1337biz• 13 years ago

I'm sure the police would be engaging in this exact same exercise if they had the manpower.

If there is something the US intelligence services are lacking when it comes to terrorism than it is certainly not the lack of manpower and money...

VLM5• 13 years ago

Well, you seem to be making some rather positive assumptions, completely out of context.

I saw this when it was new, yesterday, and it is one pic in a in a giant series of photoshops showing Dorner is responsible, and a zillion of the other usual 4chan and reddit suspects.

So I glanced at this (or one of the numerous others very similar) and at a glance said Oh LOL very funny to photoshop Moot into the pix but Moot is going to be pissed now. At closer glance today, Moot is in fact a skinny white dude but this seems to be a different one (insert racially insensitive comment about skinny white guys all looking the same to me at long distance and low res, hey recognizing the problem is more than half way to fixing it). And its all rather tasteless humor so I scrolled past it pretty quick for better stuff (aka pretty much ANYTHING other than jokes about blown up people) I'm surprised this is still "of interest" today.

The properly journalistic way to look at this is in context, you REALLY need to look for instance at the reddit posts on the same topic immediately before and after which show the probably late mr dorner being responsible in one via some pretty amusing CSI style animated gif photoshop work, and another photoshop job doing the same with spiderman (no kidding). And some dumb anime ones, and the usual racial slurs, etc. However in a giant sea of photoshops, this one story is gaining traction. Probably because its politically correct to assume an angry white dude did it, whereas the similar photoshops of arabs in turbans are too politically incorrect (aside from also being completely ridiculous and tasteless).

Now the question of the day is who is this dude who probably got photoshopped in, and I'm not a huge Stargate fan by any means (err, well...) but I am about 95% sure this was a generic uniformed dude from SG:U or SG:Atlantis. Now it could all be real in which case SG:U or SG:Atlantis uniforms are going to be solely for the tasteless next Halloween, or its just vaguely coincidental that the the SG uniform people used some pretty much off the shelf stuff from Gander Mountain or uscav and it means pretty much nothing.

I wrote a bunch of stuff about which episode of SG:U I think this uniform and backpack comes from, but the pix is so low res and I'm working from memory, so I deleted it.

I don't know whats more embarrassing, a bunch of people getting all worked up believing one pix on a site known for "funny" photoshops is authentic, or me admitting in public that I watch syfy network sometimes, even worse I got roped into watching SG:U and I'm still kinda pissed they never had any closure to the series.

I guess if there is any "startup lesson" here for the HN community its that you can't usefully research something in total isolation of its surroundings.

That doesn't mean its absolutely false, just probably. For gods sakes whoever is doing this research for real, do us all a favor and DO NOT publish it in the funny photoshops section if you want it taken seriously, OK? Frankly anywhere else would be better.

This doesn't mean its all a waste of time. If the pix are not photoshopped, and if for example the SG:U costume department bought its backpacks and shirts and caps from Cabellas Outfitters or REI or whatever, and the dude in the pix shopped fairly recently at the same place, extensive research into that topic MIGHT help the authorities.

analog• 13 years ago

There have been a few of these cases, but they all (iirc) have been started by traditional media rather than the internet mob.

In fact the mob in this case seems to be showing a lot of common sense with top voted comments like the parent here urging caution.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

Anonymous also digitally lynched a guy assumed to have thrown a puppy off a bridge. Turned out they had the wrong guy.

Vigilante justice is reckless and comes with big risks, as romantic as it may sound to some to sit in the comfort of your desk chair and bring about digital justice.

sdoering4• 13 years ago

> as romantic as it may sound to some to sit in the comfort of your desk chair and bring about digital justice.

Isn't this romantic notion, bringing justice with a click the driving force of nearly every online-petition, and things like this.

Isn't this romantic notion the reason why the new demo is so often practiced? New demo = to ddos someone to mars or jupiter, and rationalize it with: I could just as easily have gone to their headquarter and demoed there?

Well most people could not have done it - and would not have done it in rain, snow, wind, driven 500 miles just to demo there, and so on.

As a lot of psychological studies showed, people saying they would do something and people doing this thing in the real world (not in their imagination) are two totally different things.

So there you have your real, underlying problem, a psychological problem, with this kind of digital activism. It is so totally different from real activism, and at the same time so new, that we really do not have proper ways as a society to deal with the dark sides of it.

Falling3• 13 years ago

Is there much difference between bad vigilante justice and bad institutional justice? How about the good variety? We know the criminal justice gets things wrong all the time.

I guess we'd like to say accountability, but even that's not really there. Take Louis Cuen Taylor, who just spent over 40 years in prison for setting fire to a hotel, despite actually helping the police attempt to save people. After all this time, it was finally accepted that there was no evidence whatsoever that Taylor actually committed the crime. He was released after pleading No Contest, making it very difficult for him to get any sort of reparations. So yes, he was finally released, but with 4 decades of his life taken from him.

ryguytilidie• 13 years ago

Anonymous called in a bomb threat on my girlfriends office because they don't know how internet hosting works. Really sucks how much being misinformed and out for vigilante justice seem to overlap nowadays.

luke-stanley• 13 years ago

What does digitally lynched mean?

bargl6• 13 years ago

Yeah this seems like it could turn into a witch hunt very quickly. The right way to get this information out there would be to privately send it to the police.

Evbn• 13 years ago

Holy cow. If you said to me "How is Richard Jewell related to the Atlanta Olympics?". I would not have guessed the correct answer: "rescued hundreds of people from a bomb."

I would have guessed the libel, which I will not repeat here.

Memory sucks.

tomjen3• 13 years ago

The authorities could prevent this if they had been more forthcomming with information.

Not telling anything for days isn't acceptable anymore -- the government used to get away with these kinds of things because it used to control the narrative, but it can't do that anymore.

fnordfnordfnord2• 13 years ago

>The media did that with the Atlanta bombing and it destroyed a guy's life.

The media? No the FBI did that. "The media" ought to have known better, and still hasn't learned better.

thegyppo• 13 years ago

Whilst it's truly amazing that they've found 3 separate photos of the same person in the same spot at the blast there's a few questions that come to mind:

- If he was planning to commit the atrocity he did, why would you stand & talk to someone? (unless they were perhaps working together)

- There's a water bottle in the backpack which leads me to believe that person is a runner?

- The bag seems a bit small to hold a 6L pressure cooker. Plus he doesn't seem to be straining/leaning forward.

- If you're standing in the crowd most people will take a backpack off & put it at their feet?

- The crowd in the second & third photos is much busier which means it's not the same spot. If you planted a bomb why would you stand in the crowd?

Been trying to line up the flags in the last 2 photos to get an idea of where he's standing but can't manage it.

zephjc• 13 years ago

> If he was planning to commit the atrocity he did, why would you stand & talk to someone? (unless they were perhaps working together)

They are photographed together in both photos, both carrying bags.

But I believe it's jumping to conclusions way way too quickly.

doktrin• 13 years ago

> If you're standing in the crowd most people will take a backpack off & put it at their feet?

I do. Both to alleviate the weight, minimize the space I take up as well as reduce the chance of someone slipping a hand inside my bag. Likewise when I'm carrying a messenger.

I'm a little weary of this set of pictures. It seems like he's edging to the front of the crowd, whereas I thought the explosions occurred a little further back. Moving to the front would be a great way to get stuck, much like ending up against the rails at a concert.

Anyhow, I think crowd sourcing this kind of investigation can potentially be of great help to law enforcement, but I really hope the internet community keeps itself in check when it comes to determining guilt & doling out punishment.

Cthulhu_• 13 years ago

> There's a water bottle in the backpack which leads me to believe that person is a runner?

Doesn't every stereotypical American have a giant bottle of water in hand / on his/her lips every two minutes?

> If you planted a bomb why would you stand in the crowd?

Makes sense for suicide bombers.

acuozzo• 13 years ago

> Doesn't every stereotypical American have a giant bottle of water in hand / on his/her lips every two minutes?

s/water/soda if you enjoy stereotyping so much.

TerraHertz2• 13 years ago

Two bombs exploded, and some reports of other devices being found.

In the crowdsource images, there are so far three possible 'guy nearby with backpack, then spotted walking away apparently without backpack'.

Keep in mind that there may be multiple people involved.

Dammit I hate 'slideshow' pages like http://www.reuters.com/article/slideshow/idUSBRE93F06T201304... Such a pain saving the images. Reuters, please just post a zipfile somewhere of the original full resolution images, please, please.

Some more good images at http://cryptome.org/2013-info/04/boston-bombs/boston-bombs.h... http://cryptome.org/2013-info/04/boston-bombs-02/boston-bomb...

pbhjpbhj2• 13 years ago

>it's truly amazing that they've found 3 separate photos of the same person in the same spot at the blast //

I looked at a few flickr images and identified about 6 people who were in 2 or 3 images at the location of the Marathon Place bomb¹ without too much effort. So I don't find that particularly amazing.

>If you're standing in the crowd most people will take a backpack off & put it at their feet? //

Based on this limit section of the marathon watchers that "most" appears to be patently false. I only saw one guy standing in that area with a bag between his legs but at least 20 other backpacks (or similar). This surprised me, I hold my backpack on my front in any crowd to try to avoid being robbed.

¹ - you can use the video footage to "triangulate" the location, the video line-of-sight passes through a tree from the centre of the finish line, you can see these details on Google Maps. Around the area between the South African and Norwegian flags.

DigitalSea• 13 years ago

We shouldn't jump to conclusions here. Are we forgetting the wrongful identification and accusations surrounding Ryan Lanza in the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting? It was his brother Adam who was the shooter but it didn't stop the media from incorrectly reporting that it was Ryan and his picture was publicised all over the news, websites, blogs, Twitter and every possible media outlet you can think of.

While it's possible the person in the image could be the culprit, lets not jump to conclusions until we have some more solid evidence. Some people take off their backpack in crowds because it can get in the way, how do we know this isn't the case here? There are a thousand legitimate justifications for not having a backpack on you were seen carrying earlier.

I usually walk to the train station to commute to work in the mornings and take my backpack off once I get on so it doesn't get in the way of others. Now I know what people will be saying if the train gets blown up and they have imagery of me with a backpack on and without...

Yver• 13 years ago

I concur and I'll add that they have assembled similar "evidence" about several people already.

Dylan16807• 13 years ago

Why do people keep bringing up Ryan, it was an off-by-one error and the shooter killed himself so there's no way anyone could look at Ryan and discriminate against him for the wrong reason.

He's in a really terrible spot but it's not because of some confused reporting.

hijinks• 13 years ago

/b/ has also posted this one. http://imgur.com/icyyRLK

wjk2• 13 years ago

That one is much more convincing than the one in OP.

yaakov34• 13 years ago

They're all very convincing. Probably because there are thousands of people with backpacks at an event like this, and they tend to take them off and put them on when they stop or want to take something out. But hey, let's just get their photos posted all over the internet as bombing suspects.

gsibble2• 13 years ago

And this one: http://i.imgur.com/LvoCC5T.jpg

sterlingross• 13 years ago

This one actually looks like the backpack in the FBI photo. Specifically the gray stripes on the shoulder straps.

KaoruAoiShiho• 13 years ago

I think this pic needs its own top level comment. This looks very convincing to me.

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

Wait, that guy is the topic picture as well. http://imgur.com/Wp2dH21

dakrisht• 13 years ago

Yeah, this one is very convincing. There are a few other pictures of this guy all over Reddit with different angles/face shot. The bag appears to match. But there were plenty of other people in the immediate area with similar bags.

Also, some people put their bags down near/between their legs to watch the race. That doesn't mean they were planting a bag. Something to consider.

I'm sure the FBI is all over Reddit and every site/photo they can get their hands on.

Neat little Google Spreadsheet here breaking down the suspects, photos, etc. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AgtCl8YvqiBodEl0...

I think there's a ton of photographic evidence out there, a lot of which we don't have access to (CCTV, pro photographers, media, etc.) FBI has all of this is analyzing it like crazy.

I wonder what kind of system they are using to create a virtual timeline of events with photos and video evidence to sift through the content...

thezilch• 13 years ago

Not convincing, despite the accusations here. You can find the guy moving away from the blast, into the crowd, with his backpack in most of the shots being used for the other suspects.

What's hilarious is someone thinks it is very convincing while posting a spreadsheet that shows it is not...

davidw2• 13 years ago

You can tell by the scraggly beard that he's guilty.

JuDue• 13 years ago

Is the guy in the brown top meant to be walking away WITHOUT a backpack?

Because I can't see either way. He looks like me MIGHT still have a backpack on.

Also the backpack seems small based on what's meant to be in it?

sharkweek• 13 years ago

I'd be very impressed if this actually led to an arrest, but I am always very wary of the collective witch hunt often caused by attempts at internet heroism.

AdamTReineke• 13 years ago

The problem with a mob is the lack of due process. If 4chan were to try to exact justice themselves and get it wrong (or right for that matter), stuff could get ugly fast. That said, I'm all for crowdsourcing discovery from people with downtime to pour over images as long as the discoveries are processed properly.

valgaze3• 13 years ago

Whoever placed these devices is/are presumably still lying low someplace in New England right now and has demonstrated a willingness to murder/maim innocent people and could be planning to do so again.

Frankly "due process" does not seem that important right now (as soon somebody is formally detained or accused, agree with you 100% on due process), but what is most important at this moment is getting credible leads/clues into the hands of law enforcement as quickly as possible.

The people poring over photographs are doing just that

jasondenizac2• 13 years ago

Without due process, law enforcement is just the vengeful application of (well financed) power.

bcoates3• 13 years ago

That sounds like something a terrorist would say. I don't think we can take the risk of not keeping you in jail until we've sorted this.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

It is when due process seems the least important that it is in fact the most important.

valgaze3• 13 years ago

Throwing a lot of eyeballs at this identification problem is fine given the circumstances of this tragedy and doesn't rise to the level of something like imposing martial law.

Whether those eyeballs belong to proper investigators or random folks on an internet forum is largely irrelevant right now since the people who did this are still at large and no one has yet claimed responsibility.

ck25• 13 years ago

It occurs to me this incident is going to get drones in use at public events asap.

Because if you had several drones circling for 24 hours before the event with high resolution and night-vision cameras, you could trace every single person on each of their timelines before the event.

Awesome tool for when crime happens but what do we do when it's guaranteed to be abused?

intended2• 13 years ago

Well CCTVs, or even older technology like finger prints, could be used to reduce crime, while also resulting in abuse or a reduction in privacy and freedoms.

Its always been the job of society to be rational about this and look at the cost of further infringement upon your liberties vs the marginal utility offered by a tool which enhances crime fighting ability.

ck25• 13 years ago

CCTV isn't going to trace you coming from your home, where you stopped along the way, how fast you went to each point and where you got out.

Drones can circle a city for days and with high resolution sensors can not miss a thing.

This isn't just a more advanced CCTV, it's a near-infallible machine.

bcoates3• 13 years ago

The number of drones you'd need to do that for even one localized event would be huge, and hugely expensive. London's much denser and more economical CCTV network has been a giant boondoggle by everyone whose job doesn't depend on declaring it a success.

ck25• 13 years ago

Military has multi-GIGApixel sensors on drones. They can watch huge portions of a city at one.

It would only take several drones to watch the entire city from altitude.

https://www.google.com/search?q=argus-is

The ARGUS-IS can stream up to a million terabytes of data and record 5,000 hours of HD footage per day. It can do this by the 1.8 gigapixel camera and 368 different sensors all housed in the ARGUS-IS.

adventured• 13 years ago

It would take one drone and maybe five years at the rate the tech is improving.

ARGUS is taking care of the 'problem.'

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-free-speech-...

slg2• 13 years ago

Playing devil's advocate, what are the guaranteed abuses if drones are used in this context? You could certainly make a slippery slope argument, but at a huge event that is taking place in public there can be no assumption of privacy. Is a drone any different in this context than any other type of camera?

cb182• 13 years ago

Is a drone any different in this context than any other type of camera?

uh yeah... Cameras have a focal point, a drone creates a kind of panopticon.

davidw2• 13 years ago

David Brin's "The Transparent Society" talks about this.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004P5O37W/?tag=dedasys-20

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

In short, the idea is to allow lots of watching, because it'll help reduce and solve crime, but also radically increase the watching of the watchers.

kokey• 13 years ago

I believe an arms race between authorities and citizens when it comes to surveillance will also be a good thing. The thing we need to protect against is if governments make this kind of competition illegal, e.g. they can have CCTV cameras monitoring the front of your house, but you're not allowed to.

r00fus• 13 years ago

The watchers will not be watched.

They've read Brin and Orwell, and have learned. They pass legislation, or ignore existing laws when it's one of them that's threatened. Examples abound. Corruption is rife.

cb182• 13 years ago

Awesome tool for when crime happens

False Premise

Crime doesn't happen on a set timetable. So how do you determine when it should or shouldn't be in use?

For something like this, and most crimes(if not all) I don't see how a drone really helps all that much anyway. The standard procedures work well enough. Crimes like this are generally "solved." The goal, however, should be to prevent them.

When something like this does slip through the cracks though, it's important to "Keep Calm and Carry On," not get all bent out of shape and fuck up your society.

Havoc• 13 years ago

Do you think drones would have changed the outcome?

buro9• 13 years ago

Crowd-sourced vigilantism, just what the world needed!

pseut• 13 years ago

Is there any other kind?

anigbrowl9• 13 years ago

A classic case of confirmation bias?

ddrmaxgt37• 13 years ago

speculation. this is misleading and not productive

_pmf_2• 13 years ago

With great power comes great bullshit.

gsibble2• 13 years ago

Another reddit comment/thread that is also interesting..... appears that another person wearing a backpack was in fact an undercover of some kind: http://www.reddit.com/r/findbostonbombers/comments/1cij0q/la...

Very curious to know this person's story. Looks like a fed.

yk• 13 years ago

The funny thing is, that there are at least six people with black nylon backpacks in the picture. So obviously an entire swarm of terrorists is depicted...

yolonoexception• 13 years ago

I feel the same way. This thing is ridiculous, someone could name the person in the image, and media will go after them. But in the end they will end up innocent and their life in ruins. As much as this may seem like a good idea, 4chan or the internet should away from pointing fingers at random people with backups.

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

Thomas Crowne affair.

But: yes.

Crowdsourcing may be useful to develop leads. But LEO really should take it from there.

wavesounds2• 13 years ago

Seriously what is going on here? Why are they the only people standing there not helping who aren't holding a camera, holding a head wound or old?

DanBC3• 13 years ago

They're trying to find out if there are other devices or if there are bombers still around.

anigbrowl9• 13 years ago

For the more forensically minded, this Reuters story [1] has a surprising amount of medium-res but closeup photos of bomb component fragments, for example enough to identify the kind of battery employed [2].

1. http://www.reuters.com/article/slideshow/idUSBRE93F06T201304...

2. http://www.amazon.com/Tenergy-3000mAh-Battery-Tamiya-Connect...

CamperBob24• 13 years ago

Unfortunately there's nowhere near enough resolution to identify anything beyond the battery and wire labels. Do those bozos think they're saving useful amounts of bandwidth by using postage-stamp size images in 2013?

Part of photo 16/28 looks somewhat like a ferrite loopstick from the AM radio portion of a portable radio, but again it's hard to be sure. The distinction is important because if that's what it is, then this PC board is probably from a benign device that just happened to be carried by someone nearby.

anigbrowl9• 13 years ago

They probably want other media outlets to pay for the high-resolution photos. They're not postage-stamp sized, nor are the people bozos for not making your life maximally convenient. You could try searching for larger-resolution versions with Tineye or so, though chances are the FBI are way ahead of everyone on this since they employ specialists in this sort of thing.

As for the ferrite loopstick, it occurs to me that if the battery pack is from an RC device (which is what it's marketed as), the bomb maker have used the RC interface as a trigger. But that's just a guess.

VLM5• 13 years ago

I believe you're linking to the wrong battery. Looking closely at the electronic speed controller PCB in the (cruddy, low res) pictures, those look like Traxxas connectors still attached to the ESC and you linked to a Tamiya connector battery. Whatever glob of plastic is on the ends of the ESC cables, I've done enough RC over the past decades to tell thats not tamiya connector, not even a heat damaged one, and enough ham radio stuff to tell its not a powerpole or remains thereof. The orientation of the connector does not look Deans connector like either. There really are not many popular RC battery connectors out there. One interesting point to note is the Tamiya connector battery is Amazon's 3rd best seller and although I haven't figured out which Tenergy battery w/ Traxxas connector this is, I'm sure its sales rank is way below 3rd.

You can trivially google for RC car traxxas connector and compare the pics to the pix of the ESC used.

Of course the overall "project" was probably kit bashing a ready to run full kit, not buying bits and pieces off amazon one at a time. Of course if you google for ready to run RC cars sold with traxxas connectors and tenergy batteries there really aren't that many possibilities. So that is interesting. If they find the remains of the RX that should probably narrow it down to like, one model of car or something. At which time things will likely get exciting for retailers of that ready to run model...

anigbrowl9• 13 years ago

You're surely right. I just searched on the brand name of the battery itself, and didn't even try to guess at the PCB/connector type, I'm not an RC guy.

khill• 13 years ago

The zipper pull tab looks like a Fox logo - like from Fox Motorsports.

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

Interestingly enough, the phenomenon 4chan/reddit/Something Awful and other free-spirited trollish communities embarking on activities like this has precedence in China: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?pa...

GHFigs4• 13 years ago

It's hilarious to see anything from /pol/ show up on Hacker News.

zalzane• 13 years ago

Yeah seriously, I thought it was going to be a cold day in hell before anyone (especially HN) took information seriously coming from a board where people think that the jews have organized and are working on world domination.

pfg• 13 years ago

I'm wondering if law enforcement is using something like Microsoft Photosynth[0] to process all the images. Probably would make their job a lot easier.

[0] Photosynth example - requires Silverlight: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=d7d78324-ad5e-41ea-94dd-...

nraynaud2• 13 years ago

Wonderful, now the US have investigators, spies, money, and stuff for that, so thanks 4chan for tackling last Mondays terrors attacks on Iraq where 6 times more people died in a coordinated terror attack on many cities. And Iraq doesn't have any real police, spies or security for that matter, since you know, invasion.

theorique• 13 years ago

Iraq has fewer people online and less comprehensive internet access.

nraynaud2• 13 years ago

yeah, that too.

withoutthis• 13 years ago

And... HN is officially Reddit.

Uchikoma2• 13 years ago

+100

workbench• 13 years ago

Le HN

tmslnz• 13 years ago

Enhance.

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

Interesting:

http://i.imgur.com/i1yLgzY.jpg

Racial profiling?

abcd_f• 13 years ago

Hardly.

parasight2• 13 years ago

Common. What is meant by "unusual characters" then if not the color of their skin and hair?

stratosvoukel• 13 years ago

Is blaming someone for a crime without actual facts legal? Is it something we should encourage? How about not? (btw am I the only one clearly seeing the bag strap on the second picture?)

nnnnni• 13 years ago

No, I definitely see something that looks like a strap on his right shoulder. It's a messenger-style gym bag or something similar, not a regular backpack.

aquadrop• 13 years ago

On the photo where backpack is missing he could just take it off and put it on the ground or on his knees. It's uncomfortable to sit in such a dense crowd with backpack on. I just hope this isn't another case of false accusing by media. Let FBI do their work before judge anyone.

TerraHertz2• 13 years ago

Regardless of risks of vigilante 'justice', I consider this sort of crowd-sourced investigation a highly valuable development. For the simple reason that there's a significant chance that this attack, like many others, was done by elements of the government. Or groups with the ability to strongly influence the official investigation.

The days when we the people could trust the motives or results of official investigations into politically significant crimes, are long gone.

The government develops ever-more powerful technological tools for monitoring ordinary people. It's entirely appropriate for ordinary people to use every technological tool at their disposal to guard against government wrongdoings.

If the Internet was able to identify the person(s) responsible here, and prove (for eg) that this was a government ploy to ban the sale of ammunition reloading black powder or bulk cartridge sales, that would be of immense significance.

For this reason I applaud the posting and permanent archiving of photos of events where such attacks occurred. We need some way to bypass the controlled MSM's low bandwidth and tendency to publish low-res, selected, edited and generally useless news images. 4chan doesn't cut it, due to the impermanence problem.

Another thing to be wary of, is the 'vanishing 911 photos' syndrome. Some organization appears, solicits the donation of original photo/film media with the promise of building a public archive, gets given a vast amount of such material, then vanishes along with all the material. NEVER give away or sell your original material. Post copies!

noptic• 13 years ago

Turning a tragedy into a proof that the gouverment is evil? Troll level: Awesome.

Crake• 13 years ago

Yes, the bombing in Boston, 9/11, etc were all a government conspiracy. I suppose you think the Holocaust never happened either and that vaccines cause autism.

mcantelon• 13 years ago

nextw33k• 13 years ago

Don't use drones or CCTV.

Crowd source the security.

I the modern world we don't take pictures of people we don't know, its considered rude. We let the state do it because somehow they are not human. However if it became the norm that 50% of a crowd of people took pictures of everybody else then you have a massive record to call upon when a crime happens. If nothing happens then the jigsaw is incomplete and privacy is maintained.

NZ_Matt• 13 years ago

Imagine if 50% of the crowd was wearing google glass

draugadrotten4• 13 years ago

I like your idea. How to turn it into public policy?

swinglock• 13 years ago

It's very difficult to see, I'm not even convinced he's not wearing a backpack in the later pictures.

robryan• 13 years ago

I don't get those saying this is unproductive, it is the classic appeal to authority. "The FBI know what they are doing". No doubt they do but currently technology doesn't allow a computer to work it out from all the footage and pictures and the sheer volume means that those on the case will probably take a long time to sift through it all.

What harm is it if the public puts forward some suggestions and some of those investigating use them as a starting point? All this information is in the public domain, I don't think we can simply pretend it doesn't exist.

Goladus• 13 years ago

We shouldn't pretend it doesn't exist however a forum like Hacker News should be quick to identify and upvote flaws in the analysis.

None of the 4chan analysis photos I've seen are anything close to reasonable. They all have blatantly obvious flaws and the pictures do not support the claims being made. In this case, a few commenters have pointed it out but there are many valid explanations for the "no backpack" shots the main one being that because the crowd is much thicker the backpack is removed and being held at his feet. It's a very common thing to do and there's nothing at all suspicious about this behavior.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

When does the "crowd" become the "mob"?

michaelbuddy• 13 years ago

And we see the double-edged sword of a crowd sourced public criminal investigation. The crowd is powerfully brilliant and ignorant.

shocks• 13 years ago

People would do well to read this [1] and watch how quickly this idea of 'helping' gets out of hand.

It may be well intended, but it escalates very quickly into publicly accusing people for doing relatively normal things.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1cf5wp/2013_boston_m...

bargl6• 13 years ago

Not to be a debbie downer, but this seems like a more sophisticated version of a witch hunt...

I assume most people here are completely against drone coverage and yet we are thrilled at the idea of going through public pictures and pointing out people who brought backpacks to an event...

danielweber3• 13 years ago

"We're too smart to be part of a witch hunt."

gekoloaid• 13 years ago

New photo: http://i.imgur.com/rTiaLuZ.jpg. This definitely looks like a placed bomb bag to me. Who knows if any of the pictures on 4chan could have been photoshoped though, but I've yet to see one of those before.

draugadrotten4• 13 years ago

more backpacks http://imgur.com/a/xPKgL

jrs235• 13 years ago

Anyone else see these things? http://imgur.com/C9uo2zj

The man with the blue jacket and back pack is seen helping an injured person... where's his back pack? (We have no idea)

There appears to be a back pack in the same picture.

On the OP page the third photo stating "Backpack seems to be missing... it appears to me that the man in the white cap is looking down and doing something, perhaps getting something out of his back pack?

natefinch• 13 years ago

I have a laptop backpack like that. On Monday it was 27ºF at 6:30am when I left for work, but it was supposed to be 55-ish during the day. So, I wore a light jacket under my warmer jacket. My work laptop is a 15" Dell and is somewhat heavy.

When I was going home, I stuffed my lighter jacket in my backpack with my laptop... and it looked exactly like that. In crowded areas, when I'm not going anywhere, I almost always take off my backpack and put it between my legs. It's the only way I can safely swivel my upper body to look around without knocking people over.

Don't jump to conclusions. It's a dude with a big black backpack. There's hundreds of thousands of those in Boston. I would be surprised if there weren't a picture of a guy with a big black backpack in that area. Lots of people work around there and lots of people don't get the day off... I didn't. I saw a ton of regulars on the Commuter Rail that morning that obviously also didn't get the day off.

I applaud the efforts of people to scan photos looking for the perpetrators... but saying they may have found the guys responsible is incendiary and dangerous.

pbhjpbhj2• 13 years ago

>Don't jump to conclusions. It's a dude with a big black backpack. There's hundreds of thousands of those in Boston. //

Yes, but are there not only a limited number who were at the bombed locations around the time of the Marathon. Identifying those - if the evidence about the bombs being in black bags is sound - gives you leads to investigate.

>but saying they may have found the guys responsible is incendiary and dangerous. //

It's also true. They may [huge huge caveat] have found the people.

Personally I think the only real way the public can help is to identify themselves and their family/friends in images that others have handed over or they've sent to the officials investigating (Boston FBI presumably).

I'm assuming that the office based enquiries are based on using available imagery to build a profile of all movements and to list people who may need to be interviewed. I poured over a few images (in one reddit thread) of the area of the bomb outside 671 Marathon Place and it was quite easy to spot certain people hanging around - what surprised me was that there wasn't already more imagery available. There must be many video feeds, CCTV and such in the area, eg from the shops at the bomb sites.

dopamean• 13 years ago

> gives you leads to investigate.

Anonymous are not investigators. As altruistic as their intentions may be here people cannot forget that. Leave the investigating to the real investigators who do this for a living. Random people on the internet are not going to see something that agents from multiple federal agencies wont see.

Your point about people from the public identifying themselves in pictures is a great one. That was what I first thought when someone posted a "suspicious" photo of a guy in a blue bathrobe. If I were that guy, and had nothing to do with the attack, I'd call the police right now and say, "hey that's me and I didnt do anything."

will_brown• 13 years ago

Now that this has been deemed a "terrorist attack", doesn't this fall under the jurisdiction of the military justice? Irrespective if the guilty party or parties are US citizens or foreign nationals - or I suppose even if they are just suspects or persons of interest - can't they be detained indefinitely without trial? Or even worse US citizen or not, suspects, without trial, can be added to the Kill List.

Kind of scary, especially with the internet creating suspects for the government.

taytus• 13 years ago

Have you guys seen this: http://imgur.com/a/sUrnA

just2n• 13 years ago

Those images were taken around 11 AM. The bomb didn't go off for nearly 4 more hours. So there would have to have been a suspicious looking bag in front of the store there for almost 4 hours. These guys were walking away from the bomb location.

We don't have access to the images being sent to the FBI, which I imagine might include a lot of personal photographs taken on phones. Deadspin's images from a few minutes before the first explosion show clearly that there were a lot of people in the vicinity actively taking pictures in all directions, so I suspect someone got a shot of the area where the bag was placed (near the intersection of the wall of the Lenscrafter's and the black railing) within 10-20 minutes of the explosion.

This is all based on public photographs and poorly coordinated timestamps. There are likely 100x as many being submitted as evidence that we can't see. It'd be nice if they were all public, as the leads a mass of volunteer investigators could turn up might result in something credible, but privacy and everything.

debt• 13 years ago

i kept thinking about effective it might be to crowdsource this particular part of the investigation. it seems the only venues available for collaboration in a situation like this are 4chan, reddit, hn, tumblr, etc. perhaps there's an opportunity for a collaborative forum that's a bit more focused and a bit less public in terms of the potential suspects.

What happens when you give 4chan images of the Boston Marathon?

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