Comment by wtvanhest | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wtvanhest | Hacker News Reader

First, a "witch hunt" is the search for witchcraft or some other non-existent force/person etc. Searching for a bombing suspect is not a witch hunt since a bombing suspect was truly on the loose with additional bombs and some type of plan to use them.

Second, the images reddit had were not the most up to date images possible. Had the bars uploaded their video, it is likely that reddit would have found the bombers the first night. They simply didn't have videos and photos that were up to date enough.

Third, the FBI had a press release around 2:00 Thursday saying they had identified the suspects and would release their images at 5:00 Thursday. (leaks were coming out earlier saying they had identified them as early as Friday morning).

Now, I understand that the FBI was probably following up on leads to locate them. But, they were not able to find them and while they were looking, the public was in grave danger.

I understand it is not good to name suspects on a public forum where we do not have enough evidence and I'm sure I would have been stressed had I been named, but the finger should be pointed at the police and we should start working toward better systems for law enforcement.

Those men planed on killing more people and could have carried out the second attack while the FBI was not releasing their identity. It is simply unacceptable that it took over 3 days to locate them in the video. I'm not saying reddit should be the system, but they need a better system to sort and analyze digital images and video.

The apology should come from the FBI.

1) a "witch hunt" can be taken in the metaphorical sense to mean a hunt for any enemy/dissenter.[1] I think the term is used rather judiciously.

2) "It is likely" isn't good enough. You're hypothesizing. Could they have found them? Maybe. Could they have not found them? Maybe. All we know is they didn't find the bombers but instead slandered a number of individuals and family names in the process.

3) I'm not sure what your background is but I like to believe that our federal law enforcement (FBI, Police, SWAT Teams, etc.), while not perfect, is pretty well-trained and collectively has thousands upon thousand of YEARS MORE experience than I do in collecting evidence, timing its release, and generally fighting crime. As such, I imagine the timed release was not to delay or elongate the process but was very intentional.

I do agree with you that it seemed to take longer than is desirable to find the suspects (especially since once they were found, one got away) but a "better system" is by no means the hive mind of untrained "armchair investigators."

Perhaps in the future there will be a way to crowd source information but the responses of Reddit 4chan, and yes, even some here on HN were well-intentioned but harmful. An apology from Reddit seems perfectly acceptable.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt#Metaphorical_usage

>1) a "witch hunt" can be taken in the metaphorical sense to mean a hunt for any enemy/dissenter.[1] I think the term is used rather judiciously.

In this case, it is being used over judiciously which is why i take exception to it. The key to a witch hunt has to be a conviction and/or a hunt for a non-real cause. I'll even take a conviction to mean real harm (economic/physical etc.) not sanctioned by the government or sanctioned by he government. Reddit didn't result in this. He might have been nervous for a few hours, but he was not harmed. (That doesn't mean we don't need safeguards in place to prevent it).

>As such, I imagine the timed release was not to delay or elongate the process but was very intentional.

I agree that they used their past experience to set the delay, and I understand they probably had good logic for it. But, just because an organization made what they thought was the right decision, in this case it appears to not have been. As an outside observer it appears that their 1000s of years of experience failed them, and they need to explain why and issue an apology.

>I do agree with you that it seemed to take longer than is desirable to find the suspects (especially since once they were found, one got away) but a "better system" is by no means the hive mind of untrained "armchair investigators."

I agree that Reddit probably isn't the best system, but we do need to look at the potential use of crowds to solve cases like this more quickly. I read through all the reddit commentary and I didn't get the sense of hive mentality you describe, there was a lot of disagreement and people stating to be careful and not post their personal information etc. It wasn't perfect, but could have been effective had they had the right images.

>Perhaps in the future there will be a way to crowd source information but the responses of Reddit 4chan, and yes, even some here on HN were well-intentioned but harmful.

At worst they were "potentially" harmful, not actually harmful. Everyone is lucky nothing bad happened to those people whose pictures were circled, but we are equally lucky the attackers did not decide to bomb something in the 3 days after the incident.

The FBI identified them early Wednesday morning and were going to hold the photos because they didn't want to enable blood thirsty vigilantes and risk having their suspects killed or detained by non-law-enforcement types for numerous reasons (if you can't imagine/understand these reasons on your own then I don't know what to say to you).

It was sites like Reddit and publications like NY Post that forced their hand to release the photos because, again, rampant amateur detectives/vigilantism is dangerous and there had already been wrongly-identified suspects whose lives' were truly in immediate danger.

The FBI doesn't owe you an apology. They are trained professionals who were able to get a positive ID on the suspects ONLY THROUGH tedious, labor intensive poring over photography and video frames (the digital technology needed to accomplish this task of a reasonable positive ID is just not there today, there was another post on this on HN a day or so ago) and then ultimately through an eye-witness testimony from the guy recovering from getting his legs blown off in the hospital.

All sites like Reddit did was hinder or at the very least alter (perhaps the effect was adiaphorous or benign, perhaps not) the investigation. If it weren't for fear of a public witch hunt/lynch mob situation, it is possible that a much slimmer/streamlined law enforcement operation could have been set in motion to capture both brothers alive without locking down the entire city. But we'll never know will we because the public is full of blood lust and everybody was suddenly an amateur internet detective. Good intentions be damned, that type of reaction is poisonous.

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