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Comment by evan_ | Hacker News Reader

This is something I was wondering about as well. Would evidence gathered in this way be admissible in court?

I worry that once the general public gets ahold of it, it would simply become a "middle-eastern-looking person finder".

I'm no lawyer but I don't we why it wouldn't be admissible unless it somehow violated the perpetrators rights. Even then since we are not the police the situation might be different.

Anyone know for sure? There must be rules of evidence that cover this situation.

I think there may be issues with authentication. Usually, you would have a witness authenticate a photo ("yes, i took this with my camera at this day and time, etc."). If it's a random photo on a website, it may be more difficult to prove its accuracy.

Seems like there would be two stages: (1) solve the crime and (2) gather the evidence. Seems like as long as the evidence is not tampered with it would still be usable in court. For example uploading a picture shouldn't destroy its value as evidence.

Even if it's not admissible, it may provide helpful leads.

Yes that would be unfortunate. I would like this to be a "crowdsource" tool, not a "mobsource" tool. I'm open to ideas on how to prevent that. Maybe moderation?

Maybe rather than focusing on finding the culprit, the crowd could simply try to identify and account for the movements of everyone present during some time window.

This, or give people objectives rather than just stabbing in the dark.

The AP[1] is reporting the bombs were in black duffel bags containing 6ltr pressure cookers. Make people look for them instead of "anything suspicious".

[1]: http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/16/some-areas-downtown-...

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