Boston suspects | Hacker News Reader

Boston suspects

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48 pointsefremjw17 comments

Please stop propagating these images. They're nothing more than speculation and could easily ruin the lives of these people.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/03/18/rush_ho...

Something from a few years back; I wouldn't be surprised if these photos end up causing even more trouble.

How is that article remotely related to this? He was flagged by a fellow passenger and no terrorist activity was actually occurring. There is no doubt that the perpetrators of these crimes were at the scene and are likely somewhere on camera.

I bet the police and FBI are very interested in these pictures.

And from 1996, there is Richard Jewell:

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

Please just stop!

The same photo repeated several times has two guys with backpacks that are both identified as suspects in one but then an unattended backpack in another. and then at least three others people/bags identified in other pictures. How many bombs were there? I only heard of two explosions and I believe one undetonated bomb found.

And then there are the pics of the two men (one with a white hat and backpack and one with a blue shirt and duffel) that later are pointed out as "backpack missing" but fails to note that in the "backpack missing" picture they are in a much more crowded spot and you can't see if he has the backpack hanging in front of him like people often do when in a tight crowd with a backpack (also similar to what the dopey looking "beard guy" suspect does with his backpack slung over his forearm in other pics).

And noting that in some shots they were not "watching the race"? Wow... guilty of being distracted, people watching, day dreaming, etc, etc, etc of many possible reasons that in one random snap shot in time you are not looking precisely where everyone else is.

From the first image:

  1: ALONE
  2: BROWN

... Very classy, 4chan. :-|

Respected news organizations were no different. Notice the mention of "Saudi National" when someone was a potential suspect. Would they do that for any other crime or any non-Muslim associated country? 4chan at least isn't pretending to be above it like others do, give them credit for that. I'll take honesty over false piety any day.

Don't get me wrong, it's still classless.

Wow! I learned more in 5 mins of flipping through these photos than I did from days glued to the news.

Want to share what exactly you learned from these pictures? All I see is circles drawn around random people carrying black backpacks.

More time stamps are needed. I found three all from the race timer(assuming they haven't been photoshopped): 2:18:41 2:35:09 3:23:?

Is there any meta-data in these pics? I examined a few but it's all been scrubbed or it was never there.

It would be interesting to get object tracking placed onto all the available video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GhNXHCQGsM).

This is very interesting. Crowdsourced law enforcement is a little creepy but hopefully they will get these guys!

No, it's not a little creepy. It's fucking disturbing. These guys are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Numerous examples were pointed out here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5562909) of people that seemed obviously guilty and then weren't. This is no different.

There is a reason we have due process. If you do not offer protection to the accused, then who will offer it to you when you stand accused?

Whether these men are guilty or not, they have a right to due process, including the presumption of innocence. Encouraging mob justice is, quite literally and with no exaggeration, encouraging the abandonment of your own basic human rights.

You cannot separate protecting the innocent and protecting the guilty. You can only protect the accused. Yes, this means you will sometimes be protecting the guilty. It even means you will sometimes acquit the guilty. That is the price of our freedom. And if you are not willing to pay, then do not be surprised when your own freedom disappears.

Before you can have due process, we need to catch the criminals that did this. I don't see how a crowd sourced examination of the publicly available evidence is a problem.

Absolutely no one should decide to take the law into their own hands because of these pictures but if they provide real leads to the terrorists, I'm all for it. There is no doubt that the bombers where in the crowd and they are likely caught on camera. Anyone carrying a large backpack or bag has to be considered a suspect.

For such an special case, I think it's a great idea. How many analysts can the FBI/CIA/DIA throw at this? I wouldn't be surprised if one of those guys in the pictures comes out to be suspect or somehow proves his "innocence". OTOH, there are pictures of one of the bags only.

> or somehow proves his "innocence"

Within that phrase is everything wrong with mob justice.

Fascinating!

Internet. Still better than news actually.

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