4 ms·

Data for the Boston Marathon Investigation Will Be Crowdsourced

34 points by cyphersanctus 14y ago

austenallred 14y ago
Well, there is the answer to this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5560247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5560247
gojomo 14y ago
And future events might just get preemptive eye-in-the-sky venue monitoring, via a system like... http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/1/3940898/darpa-gigapixel-drone-surveillance-camera-revealed http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/1/3940898/darpa-gigapixel-dro... ...that makes post hoc tracing of proximate suspects more amenable to computer-vision-automation.
nostromo 14y ago
Imagine the evidence collected in 5 years if Google Glass is successful. You could probably recreate the entire crime scene in 3D using tech like Photosynth.
- heurist 14y ago
  As I was watching videos and looking at all the pictures yesterday I felt like I was starting to do that in my head.
randyrand 14y ago
Doesn't the FBI always ask for people to submit relevant info? The only difference I see here is that a lot more people were filming because of the race and the use of a buzzword.
gldnspud 14y ago
«Davis requested that any spectator providing media showing the attacks indicate the time they collected the data so police “don’t need to go through the electronic signature.”» Wouldn't this be more costly and less accurate than scanning EXIF and other metadata, dumping it all into a database, and sorting and scanning through it temporally? I'd hope that the majority of the images and videos they'll receive directly from citizens will still have this information intact. Edit: I see that austenallred already pointed to a thread that describes such a methodology. I just find it concerning that those who are tasked with investigation seem to be ignorant (perhaps not willfully) of the other side of how technology can assist with investigations of this sort.
- a3n 14y ago
  They'd need both, the human saying "I took this here at this time," and the EXIF data. Just because the camera says the photo was taken at 3:15pm doesn't meant the photo was taken at 3:15pm. Although they could probably substitute some human-in-the-loop with analysis (or verify a human time/place statement), comparing non-time-and-place-established photos with more reliably known-data photos.
turingbook 14y ago
What website will be used to do this crowdsourcing?

34 points by cyphersanctus 14y ago

Well, there is the answer to this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5560247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5560247

gojomo 14y ago

And future events might just get preemptive eye-in-the-sky venue monitoring, via a system like... http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/1/3940898/darpa-gigapixel-drone-surveillance-camera-revealed http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/1/3940898/darpa-gigapixel-dro... ...that makes post hoc tracing of proximate suspects more amenable to computer-vision-automation.

nostromo 14y ago

Imagine the evidence collected in 5 years if Google Glass is successful. You could probably recreate the entire crime scene in 3D using tech like Photosynth.

heurist 14y ago
As I was watching videos and looking at all the pictures yesterday I felt like I was starting to do that in my head.

randyrand 14y ago

Doesn't the FBI always ask for people to submit relevant info? The only difference I see here is that a lot more people were filming because of the race and the use of a buzzword.

gldnspud 14y ago

«Davis requested that any spectator providing media showing the attacks indicate the time they collected the data so police “don’t need to go through the electronic signature.”» Wouldn't this be more costly and less accurate than scanning EXIF and other metadata, dumping it all into a database, and sorting and scanning through it temporally? I'd hope that the majority of the images and videos they'll receive directly from citizens will still have this information intact. Edit: I see that austenallred already pointed to a thread that describes such a methodology. I just find it concerning that those who are tasked with investigation seem to be ignorant (perhaps not willfully) of the other side of how technology can assist with investigations of this sort.

a3n 14y ago
They'd need both, the human saying "I took this here at this time," and the EXIF data. Just because the camera says the photo was taken at 3:15pm doesn't meant the photo was taken at 3:15pm. Although they could probably substitute some human-in-the-loop with analysis (or verify a human time/place statement), comparing non-time-and-place-established photos with more reliably known-data photos.

turingbook 14y ago

What website will be used to do this crowdsourcing?