Crowdsourcing a crime scene investigation

I was glued to the news during much of last weekend. After two bombs exploded close to the finish line of the annual Boston marathon, it became nearly impossible to escape the images and video that poured out of the wounded city.

While I felt remarkably well-informed, I also felt a bit violated, as if the hysteria of the relentless media coverage leaked into my soul.  I couldn’t believe that CNN reporter Susan Candiotti, perhaps deprived of sleep or a brain, described the scene to anchor Wolf Blitzer thus: “Being in Watertown right now, the streets are empty. It’s eerie. It’s as though a bomb had dropped somewhere.” I wonder what gave her that impression. Another network gaffe involved anchor John King’s controversial and erroneous “dark-skinned male” comments.

‘Isn’t it terrible about Chechnya?’

As facts emerged, it became clear that the characters in this real-life drama were unlike those that had figured in previous terrorist acts. The Tsarnaev brothers, ethnic Chechens, had been residents of prosperous Cambridge for more than a decade after their family moved there to flee post-Soviet Caucasus. 19-year-old Dzhokhar — who now faces two charges: for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and for malicious destruction of property — was a University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth student. His older brother Tamerlan, killed after a chaotic pre-dawn chase with police, was a former boxer.

The places woven into the story — Kyrgyzstan, Dagestan — were faraway and relatively exotic. Somehow the first image that flashed in my pop culture-addled mind was a scene from Bridget Jones’s Diary in which the titular heroine, brought to life by Renée Zellwegger, asked “So what do you think of the situation in Chechnya?” It seems rather crass in retrospect, but I did reblog a gif of that to mark the moment. You can count on Tumblr for these kinds of things.

Spectator surveillance

That said, it was my first time to witness a crowdsourced investigation. “Law enforcement obtained video clips from cameras installed outside department stores close to the finish line of the Boston marathon that showed two young men in baseball caps carrying backpacks, and another of a man leaving a backpack at the bomb site,” according to the Financial Times.

In a 21st century twist, local police and other investigators asked civilians for assistance. Pictures captured on personal smartphones were then sorted, digitally assembled and painstakingly analyzed for patterns of suspicious behavior. “It would become a reminder that the public enthusiasm for documenting their lives can outpace even the vast surveillance apparatus of the government,” commented Wired.

I know for a fact that this is sometimes done at weddings, when disposable cameras are set on tables for guests to take snapshots of the reception. I never imagined that spectator surveillance would one day supplement an FBI manhunt.

Networked amateurs

Of course, as the Financial Times’ Robert Wright clarifies, networked amateurs did not solve the bombing. “The Internet has been an important tool in gathering raw information. But it did not empower the public that gathered the information. It empowered the people who had investigative expertise independent of the Internet.”

In a tit-for-tat move, it appears that informal citizen analysis can be used another way. If 4chan and Reddit proved helpful in gathering information about the bombing perpetrators, the #freejahar hashtag on Twitter is more curious territory. “It’s a mix of conspiracy theories, sympathy for Tsarnaev and skepticism of the official narrative surrounding the 19-year-old’s arrest,” writes Wired. “A flood of Twitter, Instagram and web postings are mirroring the crowdsourced effort to find the bomb culprit, except this time they’re out to exonerate him.” Welcome to the world of online sleuthing.

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