Explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon

[Abagadro]

That plant explosion is a bad one. I would anticipate a fair number of deaths there.

[Sir T]

Massive explosion and fire right now in Waco.

Seems like a fertiliser plant blew up. But seriously... timing.

Someone caught the blast ob camera. Its around the 29 second mark. It was massive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROrpKx3aIjA

[Tale]

Cops and firefighters were at the fire when the explosion happened. Getting reports of 70 dead.

[Ghambit]

I like ya'alls theorycrafting here. It's cathartic

It makes me want to delete my posts in the thread lest I get caught in the sweep that picks these people up.  

I'm waiting until at least page 10 before I turn this over to the authorities.  You've got time.

I'm sure I'm already on a few watch lists with an annotation of "Mostly Harmless".

--Dave

EDIT: Seriously paranoid bastard that I am, if I had any thoughts of ever using this knowledge, you'd never see me talking about it.  It's the stuff I know that I'm silently holding in reserve you need to worry about.

In all seriousness, watchlist or not, there are combinations of things you can't buy w/o someone knocking at your door or at least keeping a close eye.  Even with regards to simple electronics.

[Quinton]

...  Either that or they were backup to a larger plot.  Queue x-files music.

Mostly just lurking, but have to point out that you want "cue", not "queue" here.  The former being a prompt to do something or the action of starting something in a performance, the latter being a line of people or a sequence.

[MahrinSkel]

In all seriousness, watchlist or not, there are combinations of things you can't buy w/o someone knocking at your door or at least keeping a close eye.  Even with regards to simple electronics.

Well, you don't want to buy a saw, contractor bags, and cleaning supplies at the same store regardless of what you're planning.

--Dave

[Selby]

In all seriousness, watchlist or not, there are combinations of things you can't buy w/o someone knocking at your door or at least keeping a close eye.  Even with regards to simple electronics.

Depends on what we're talking about.  I can make practically anything I want and have access to all sorts of electrical parts drawers at work.  No one has ever questioned anything we buy.

Buying things already done from hobby shops that can be combined is a bigger red flag than a few Digikey and Mouser orders.

[Ghambit]

Just because you haven't been questioned doesn't mean you're not being watched.  As Dave says, typically it's as simple as "that dork is harmless."

[Tale]

Pressure cooker bombs occur "almost daily" in Pakistan.

Since Malik began leading the bomb squad in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in 2009, his officers have defused more than 5,000 explosive devices, about half of which have been pressure cooker bombs, he said. This year alone, his bomb disposal technicians have defused about 125 bombs in pressure cookers, he said.

[apocrypha]

All this internet detective shit going on with circles drawn round faces in photos is going to lead to a LOT of completely innocent people getting labelled as suspicious.

How would you feel if you were at an event like this and got your face plastered all over 4chan or Reddit because you'd taken your backpack off or you had brown skin and were looking the other way to everyone else in a photo?

I don't see any way to stop this happening but I think it's highly likely something really bad will happen to someone as a result of it sometime.

[DraconianOne]

I agree.

I don't seeem to give a shit about theorycrafting bomb components but, strangely, find myself wondering if Jeffrey Bauman, the 24 year old who was pictured with both his feet missing, will ever choose to race again, either with prosthetics or wheelchair. I also wonder if, like Martine Wright (who lost both her legs in the London 7/7 bombing and ended up competing for Team GB sitting Volleyball team in the Paralympics last year) he might overcome adversity and that, pehaps,  we'll hear his name again in 3-7 years in either Rio or Istanbul/Tokyo/Madrid.

Because I think that would be a Good Thing.

[Chimpy]

I'm in agreement with the flailing frog.

[Morat20]

All this internet detective shit going on with circles drawn round faces in photos is going to lead to a LOT of completely innocent people getting labelled as suspicious.

How would you feel if you were at an event like this and got your face plastered all over 4chan or Reddit because you'd taken your backpack off or you had brown skin and were looking the other way to everyone else in a photo?

I don't see any way to stop this happening but I think it's highly likely something really bad will happen to someone as a result of it sometime.

Ask that Jewell guy from Atlanta.

I think I read they did make an arrest in the ricin case. Seems lone whacko, unconnected with Boston.

[Merusk]

The evening they found the letter some congresswoman was saying it was a guy who often sent letters in to that member of Congress.  So yeah, I can't imagine they wouldn't have made an arrest.

[MahrinSkel]

I was just about to post that.  Oh well, I'll do it anyway: His name was Richard Jewell.  Yeah, we should totally leave baseless accusations up to the cops and journalists, they are so good at it.

4-chan can't do any worse than the media, and they have more eyeballs than the cops to go through the thousands of images.

--Dave

[UnSub]

4-chan can't do any worse than the media,

You can sue the media for getting things wrong though. People can get fired for making incorrect allegations.

You don't have that defence against 4chan.

[schild]

4-chan can't do any worse than the media,

You can sue the media for getting things wrong though. People can get fired for making incorrect allegations.

You don't have that defence against 4chan.

I would imagine hitting the media for libel is near impossible these days otherwise Fox News wouldn't even exist anymore. (Do they even count as "media" /groan)

[Ironwood]

Fox won that lawsuit that said they were allowed to make shit up.

Which is all you need to know.

[Miasma]

It would have to be a lot easier to sue some random 4chan guys than a real media outlet.  Don't know what lawyer would take the case since the most you could recover from your typical 4chan user would be his anime collection, a computer riddled with viruses and possibly a mint in box TMNT action figure.

I like how that ricin guy used his real initials in the poison letters.  I wonder if he's just really dumb or if he wanted to get caught.

[ghost]

I wonder if he's just really dumb or if he wanted to get caught.

Not mutually exclusive. 

[Ghambit]

If you're a witness to an offense such as this (or fit a close description), then you can expect to minimally be thoroughly questioned by an authority.  Whining that your head has a circle over it on 4chan is clownshoes.  Matter of fact, if you were that close, it's your fuckin duty to goto the police/FBI in the first place.  Not wait for your face to be plastered all over reddit.

Look at it like this, people/authorities will waste countless amounts of time researching your dumbarse because you failed to come in even though an APB for a guy with a black bag, white hat, and so forth is all over every goddamned station in the world.  But since you'd rather not be fuckin bothered to pick up a phone in between DoTa rounds, you get labeled a suspect and put up and studied on 4chan.

So yah, no sympathy here.  Carry on redditers, carry on.  Minimally, the public can speed up the investigation by helping to rule people out quicker - if you're one of those people that have to be ruled-out, for the love of Mike dont whine about it. Srysly?  That Arab in blue trackclothes with one of the black backpack carriers actually showed up at the courthouse to give his statement, w/o any call from any authority.  He saw he was being publicly probed and immediately took action (not waste precious time) to clarify and give a statement on what he saw. 

That's good work, no matter how you spin it.  None of that would've happened with any speed w/o armchair sleuths.

[Arthur_Parker]

 

[calapine]

Yep, I have no love for these internet vigilantes. How did they get a hang of security footage anyway?

Regarding media, thats what libel/media/privacy laws are there for.

Sometimes it seems to me your 1st amendment  is some almost as much a fetish as the 2nd.At the same time right to privacy doesn't have a fancy x th number, so it's not important or something.

[schild]

Meh, you waive your right to privacy when you're an idiot.

P.S. I legit have no clue who that is.

[MahrinSkel]

4-chan can't do any worse than the media,

You can sue the media for getting things wrong though. People can get fired for making incorrect allegations.

You don't have that defence against 4chan.

He got half a million out of NBC, probably because Tom Brokaw was actually capable of shame.  The rest stiff-armed him until he died.  I still have more confidence in the judgement and empathy of the guys that brought us Two Girls, One Cup than in the current crop of 'journalists,.

--Dave

[Arthur_Parker]

I think it's the guy on the right, I don't really have strong feelings either way, the public are going to look for all kinds of stuff in photos so there's no point trying to stop them.  The press are a bit different, especially if that headline is wrong.

[Teleku]

Nah dude, it has to be the Kaczynski looking guy who was carrying around his backpack.  I mean, look at him!

Bleh, its hard.  I see both sides of the argument, since they've highlighted a number of suspects, and some of them (if not all) have to be innocent.  Having your face posted across the internet as the guy who possibly blew up an 8 year old is not cool.  However, there is absolutely no way to stop this now.  The internet is here, everybody has a camera on hand now, and social networking is legion.  This is the new norm, better get use to it.  Taking that into account, there is a real chance that crowd sourcing the investigation of all the pictures at such a huge media event like this could very well work out to catch the criminals far better than the police going it alone.  Sucks for all the innocents, but with the fact that I can see no way to stop it, may as well make the best of it.

[HaemishM]

One way to curb it would be for shitstains like the New York Post to stop posting goddamn headlines like that pictured above. No, it wouldn't stop the Internet Detectives, but it might make some glory seekers among them a bit less inclined to waste manhours being Internet Detectives. Also, FUCK THE NY POST IN ITS EARHOLE.

[Paelos]

If you were there, and you don't immediately go to the authorities to tell them what you saw in an effort to help, even if you saw nothing you think of consequence, you are doing yourself no favors.

[Ingmar]

Good old reliable victim blaming.

[Lantyssa]

They were present at an event where kids were raining down on people.  It'd be quite normal for them to be too freaked out to think about what's most helpful to the police.

[Pennilenko]

Good old reliable victim blaming.

Victim blame, best blame.

[Arthur_Parker]

The best bit is some of the photos were from a couple of hours before anything happened, so potentially anyone in Boston that day had best report in to the nearest police station.

[Paelos]

Good old reliable victim blaming.

The victims are the people with lost limbs, in the hospital, or in the ground.

[Pennilenko]

The victims are the people with lost limbs, in the hospital, or in the ground.

Hardly accurate, any one touched negatively by the event is a victim.