12 ms·

FBI Updates on Boston explosions

107 points by martin_ 14y ago

iansinke 14y ago
Their site is absolutely hammered right now. The live video feed here (http://live.reuters.com/Event/Boston_Marathon_Explosion?live http://live.reuters.com/Event/Boston_Marathon_Explosion?live) has details. They have video of 2 suspects, one of which set down an "unusually heavy" backpack.
- vonmoltke 14y ago
  Someone has an Imgur mirror of the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g
MichaelApproved 14y ago
For me, the HN part of the story is that the FBI servers are having trouble keeping up with the traffic to their site. Edit: Here's one of the responses I got while trying to load the FBI website ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to retrieve the requested URL the following error was encountered: Zero Sized Reply Footprint did not receive any data for this request. Footprint 4.8/FPMCP Generated Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:42:44 GMT by 8.12.217.126 (Footprint 4.8/FPMCP)
- blaines 14y ago
  In addition the linked footprint site is not responding!
- underdown 14y ago
  the link up top is a malformed url - looks like maybe a bad c&p http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multip... worked for me
  - blaines 14y ago
    Yep your link (kind of) worked. It's not loading quickly or entirely.
  - martin_ 14y ago
    Wrong - it may look like a bad c&p, but if you go to fbi.gov and check the link on the right hand side, it is, in fact correct. The servers are just struggling right now with the assets, now mine are cached it loads instantly.
    - underdown 14y ago
      ya - guess you're right - what a redundant url.
- danso 14y ago
  Yeah, I hate to say it, but my first thought was: "Is there no one at the FBI who has ever heard of a CDN or S3 or even Imgur to upload static assets to?" The issue at hand isn't a national emergency (because the attacks happened a few days ago with the suspects apparently quiet) but one of these days, they'll need a more robust way to disseminate info.
  - pekk 14y ago
    To be fair, I don't think that many people on HN are facing the kind of traffic spike the FBI site just got.
  - slg 14y ago
    While these photos and video are the opposite of confidential, I am not the least bit surprised that the FBI wants to keep the FBI's data on the FBI's servers given the nature of their business.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - MichaelApproved 14y ago
      The website is public. There's nothing keeping them from having using a CDN or other caching service or, better yet, setting up their own caching servers to handle the load better.
  - icpmacdo 14y ago
    I would find it quite amusing if the FBI was posting to imgur.
- martin_ 14y ago
  The BBC have mirrored some of the data: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22211190 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22211190
- sinnerswing 14y ago
  cnn.com, nytimes.com, nbcnews.com
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    That's not the point. The public should be able to get the information directly from the FBI's website without it being filtered through the media. You'd think the FBI would be able to setup some server caching to handle traffic spikes to their website.
- D9u 14y ago
  The site loads up fine for me, and an Etherape scan shows that the site uses more than just one or two servers.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- brownbat 14y ago
  The primary release is from the fbi YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=M80DXI932OE http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=M... There are two unblurred suspects in that video, and the FBI site has some other grainy photos of the two suspects.
- blhack 14y ago
  If anybody is looking for a mirror... http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g
tkahn6 14y ago
Surveillance video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M80DXI932OE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M80DXI932OE This is from the FBI Youtube account and it's linked to on FBI.gov. Guy in the white cap is the one who they say placed the bomb.
- martin_ 14y ago
  The second bomb. The first bomb is unknown, and they haven't stated why Suspect #1 is of interest
  - c0ur7n3y 14y ago
    It appears to me that the two bebackpacked individuals are together. The second one loses his backpack in the footage. I assume the first has the first bomb in his backpack.
    - martin_ 14y ago
      A wise man once said: "Assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups"
      - raccer 14y ago
        lol, I wouldn't go so far as calling the villain in any Steven Seagal movie "a wise man".
    - rockdiesel 14y ago
      I've watched the footage a couple of times. I don't see either of them losing their backpacks. What part of the video are you seeing suspect #2 without his backpack?
      - c0ur7n3y 14y ago
        You know what you're right. Thankfully, I'm not on the investigation team.
tych0 14y ago
It's interesting that Carmen Ortiz is the (a?) US Attorney who is working on this. I would have thought they were compartmentalized by type of crime a bit more.
- rhizome 14y ago
  It's regional, and she's the boss of that region.
  - tych0 14y ago
    Yeah, I guess I had no idea USAs were segmented like that. Would it not make more sense to have them segmented by type of law, since they're all arguing in federal courts anyway? (Obviously I know nothing about law :-)
    - danso 14y ago
      There are divisions by type of crime (financial, terrorism, government corruption, capital murder) but these types of crime often overlap and thus require overlapping resources and personnel from a DA's office...and someone has to be the person who decides how and what to allocate to each case. This is not much different than police departments, which have separate departments for patrol, homicide, burglary, vice, internal affairs, etc....no matter how the squads are organized, there is still a chief and/or a commissioner who makes the policy and management decisions and who makes the official public statements.
    - pyre 14y ago
      | Would it not make more sense to have them segmented | by type of law, since they're all arguing in federal | courts anyway She probably has many specialized areas under her, but she's at the top of that particular power structure.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  No, the US attorney is a per-state office. They're like attorneys-general for Federal law.
dakrisht 14y ago
So I take the photos aren't clear enough and/or the FBI doesn't have the facial recognition capabilities (read not in the database) to identify these fuckers? Can anyone elaborate on the scope of facial recognition technologies used by law enforcement? NSA surely has something powerful... Also - cell towers - they can look at logs for the time period when these guy were on the phone and nail down a list of suspects, etc. Wonder what their approach is here. Clearly enlisting the public to help is key but I'm sure they have a variety of technologies to find these fucks.
- cglace 14y ago
  unless they were using burners
  - DoggettCK 14y ago
    Or aren't the bombers, but just suspects for the time being.
    - pyre 14y ago
      They don't have to be the bombers to have been using burner phones.
  - dakrisht 14y ago
    True good point, damn burners. Two gigantic idiots - walking the streets together, around corners carrying heavy backpacks. Can't fathom how they didn't know with todays surveillance and a million people taking photos that they wouldn't get spotted.
    - mentat 14y ago
      Because two friends don't walk streets together carrying backpacks... Because the FBI is always accurate in their information...
    - nosequel 14y ago
      Two reasons, they might not care to get away with it, or these aren't the people responsible.
LammyL 14y ago
Does anyone know if the crowd sourcing of suspects on 4chan the other day picked out the same suspects the FBI announced today?
- planetjones 14y ago
  No they didn't
- pyre 14y ago
  The source material here looks to be CCTV cameras, which were probably not posted online.
- yuvadam 14y ago
  No, neither of these suspects came up on 4chan or reddit. There seem to be no real hi-res images of these suspects, except for a photo which just showed up of suspect at site #1 [1] [1] - http://imgur.com/a/34wtj http://imgur.com/a/34wtj
  - themckman 14y ago
    Gosh that'd be eerie if it turns out to be these guys knowing they walked right past you and your friends and to have a photograph of it.
- kayge 14y ago
  They were pretty close. The 4chan suspect had a forward-facing white baseball cap. The FBI suspect has a rear-facing white baseball cap. These kinds of minor inaccuracies are fairly common in crowdsourced solutions.
craigerrington 14y ago
There's some photos on this FBI page of a 17 year old kid, who was fingered by our internet detectives - and has already come forward to clear his name http://news.yahoo.com/teen-am-not-boston-marathon-bomber-175755674--abc-news-topstories.html http://news.yahoo.com/teen-am-not-boston-marathon-bomber-175...
- Kylekramer 14y ago
  These are pretty clearly different people than the 17 year old. The Yahoo article is currently confusing cause it has photos of the actual two suspects and none of the person who came forward on the story, but the person who came forward isn't in the FBI photos.
  - grandalf 14y ago
    are you sure?
phreanix 14y ago
Mirrored on imgur: http://imgur.com/irnkk5e http://imgur.com/irnkk5e
tunesmith 14y ago
Just the fact that they're young makes me think international rather than domestic. If they're bombers they don't exactly seem the conspiratorial old bitter unabomber type.
- teamonkey 14y ago
  If they're international then the FBI shouldn't need to crowdsource the identities of these people. They will at least have fingerprints and facial photographs of these guys.
  - kevincennis 14y ago
    Wait - what?
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      I assume he is talking about passport photos and whatnot. Of course they could have gone to Canada and simply driven across the boarder at any number of places without anyone around for miles. Or they could have come in from Mexico without papers, like thousands of others do all the time.
    - ef4 14y ago
      "U.S. Department of State consular officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers collect biometric information (digital fingerprints and a photograph) from all non-U.S. citizens between the ages of 14 and 79, with some exceptions, when they apply for visas or arrive at major U.S. ports of entry." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Visitor_and_Immigrant_Status_Indicator_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Visitor_and_Immi...
  - Shivetya 14y ago
    only if they entered through proper means. Its just hop and skip across that Northern border.
    - 14y ago
danso 14y ago
The handling of these photos has been very interesting...since early this morning, the FBI have been telling the press that they do have good footage of the suspects...but they didn't release it until the end of the day, at least 12 hours later. Assuming that the FBI had total control of this release schedule (and that'a a big if), I don't see the strategy of this. Even if they were 99% sure that they had legit footage of possible suspects, why announce that, until they are good and ready (i.e. within an hour) to release them to the public? In fast-moving crime scenes, the strategy is usually to withhold as many facts of the crime from the public until a good suspect has been nabbed...among other things, this prevents people from claiming to have witnessed specifics when in fact, they only saw them on TV or heard about it in the news. When a witness (or suspect) tells the police a fact that has been withheld from the public, that's a tool for the police to use to determine a witness's reliability. In the case we have now, the suspected bombers have had at least 12 hours notice that the FBI had working images of them. Even if it were a complete bluff...what would be the point? Isn't it better to keep the suspects in as much ignorance as possible? It may be that at least one of them is dumb and complacent enough to think they've gotten away with it. But this is a new age of news dissemination, so maybe the FBI was just flying by the seat of their pants. Part of me thinks that they did have a suspect/person of interest all this time (since yesterday's erroneous reports) and that this release is a partial ruse to flush out a co-conspirator (who, if he/she believes the press conference, thinks that the FBI has no one in custody yet).
- whiskeychaser 14y ago
  Maybe they are putting these pics out knowing full well that they are not suspects and they already have the real suspects either in custody or are on their trail. This release could be a bluff. Wouldn't be the first time.
  - danso 14y ago
    That's what the cynical person in me is thinking. However, the realistic person in me is thinking: if that is the case, then the FBI released these photos knowing full well that innocent men who look at all similar to these blurry photos are now at risk of getting beaten/murdered...which would not help the investigation.
ConceitedCode 14y ago
Is there anyway to "stitch" together the photos to improve quality? Like filling in details on the hat for instance. I could have sworn I have seen similar technology before.
- blhack 14y ago
  I believe there actually is! Isn't this part of the new version of Adobe Photoshop?
pkfrank 14y ago
I'm disappointed in the technical solution for uploading footage at www.BostonMarathonTips.FBI.gov It would be very powerful if they had a public-(upload-only)-dropbox where folks could drop relevant footage in a seamless manner.
duskwuff 14y ago
I'm amused to see that the FBI has a YouTube account, and posted the surveillance video on there. :)
themckman 14y ago
I'm curious, I watched the conference on cnn.com and there was some guy going off about the FBI lying and waiving around photographs that the press seemed to swarm after the official press conference was over. He said a website a few times, but I never got it. Did anyone else see this or know who he was?
- fiatpandas 14y ago
  I don't know who he was but the site he was screaming out was infowars.com. I think he was trying to draw attention to the photos you may have seen of the black backpack special ops guys who popped up in a few images
  - bluepen44 14y ago
    Curious article. Though now I do wonder why those guys were there..
    - fiatpandas 14y ago
      I really don't think there's a big conspiracy with them. I think the article correctly identified them as members of a private security firm, but I really just think the city authorities hired them to assist with protecting the race, which probably explains why one of them appeared to be walking around with a radiation detector.
WestCoastJustin 14y ago
These photos [0] seem better as you can click on the high-res option! I am only running linux but do you think the SmartDeblur program (Mac/Win) [3] would work here? Some cool examples [1] [2]. [4] seems like the best option for the SmartDeblur. [0] http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston/photos http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multip... [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2221466/SmartDeblur-Download-app-blurs-fuzzy-images-amazing-results.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2221466/Smart... [2] http://en.paperblog.com/smartdeblur-will-work-magic-on-your-blurry-photos-333803/ http://en.paperblog.com/smartdeblur-will-work-magic-on-your-... [3] https://github.com/Y-Vladimir/SmartDeblur https://github.com/Y-Vladimir/SmartDeblur [4] http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston/image/suspect-2-full-length-front-view-high-res http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multip...
- Ives 14y ago
  I tried it with both the stable version the github page links to and the latest beta version on http://smartdeblur.net/ http://smartdeblur.net/. Other than changing the blurryness to blockyness, it doesn't seem to do a whole lot. [1] Maybe it works better on motion blur e.g. because with motion blur all of the information is still there (just overlayed or convoluted in some other way), while this image is just an interpolated version of a smaller image that doesn't contain as much information. It's definitely possible that someone else might be able to change some program settings for the better though. [1] http://imgur.com/DnkbL3V http://imgur.com/DnkbL3V with a 100x100px kernel and 51% smooth in the v2.0 beta. Not exactly an improvement
  - PatHyatt 14y ago
    After playing with SmartDeblur myself I concur with this finding. No betterment to be had.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
Reddit seems to have already identified Black Hat's hat. Assume the FBI had already, but interesting how fast the crowd works on details like that. http://i.imgur.com/D9tSDUf.jpg http://i.imgur.com/D9tSDUf.jpg
- skeletonjelly 14y ago
  Link to the thread? Edit: Nevermind. Found it http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cmt5j/video_of_suspects_in_marathon_bombing_available/ http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cmt5j/video_of_suspec...
- jaydub 14y ago
  I wonder if some sort of image processing could be done to further clear the images of the face given the belief of how the hat ought to look?
  - incision 14y ago
    I had the same thought. You'd think that knowing accurate dimensions and features of something so nearby could be used to gauge distortion on the face. Likewise, perhaps some kind of computer vision could quickly search for the distinctive pattern of that hat in other images/video.
aj700 14y ago
When the Met(ropolitan Police) or Gendarmerie Nationale or Carabinieri raid a property, the terrorists they are looking for have only household improvised weapons. Every European is today, once again glibly pointing this out (touché). When they are in the US, given the behaviour [le mot juste] of congress today, is it surprising that they can and so will shoot back? Of course they will. It is inexplicable and totally bizarre to the rest of the world that they are lethally "armed and dangerous" because they ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO BE. "We don't care that the world things we are all immovably, constitutionally crazy" is such a weird position. You seem not to. One nation demonstrably under the NRA. Americans seem to actually think that these weekly gun massacres happen everywhere else too. They just don't. It is now absolutely clear that you can kill hundreds in a day with a few of your own guns, and the federal government will spring into not the tiniest bit of action.
- lukifer 14y ago
  The atrocity in Boston has not the slightest thing to do with gun policy. Any nutjob can create homemade bombs whether or not guns are legal.
  - msandford 14y ago
    And the people who planted the bombs are definitely NOT law abiding citizens. If they're willing to kill a bunch of random, innocent bystanders how much more willing do you think they'd be to kill law enforcement bent on their apprehension? Once they decide they're willing to break the law and blow up bombs it stands to reason they'd be comfortable procuring some illegal guns as well.
asynchronous13 14y ago
In the video, there's a girl wearing a yellow pullover and a large back-pack that is a little behind the guy labeled as a suspect. She shows up in each of the scenes (at 0:08, 0:20, 0:29) Is there information outside of this video that makes him more suspicious than her? Otherwise, I'd say both of them exhibit the same level of innocence/guilt.
- Goladus 14y ago
  Is there information outside of this video that makes him more suspicious than her? Most assuredly. I suspect they have video of these two guys dropping their bags. The photos they released are so that people can identify them.
blantonl 14y ago
So far, crowdsourcing has identified one high resolution image that shows both suspects running from the scene: http://i.imgur.com/I1dF69f.jpg http://i.imgur.com/I1dF69f.jpg (Note the guy with the white polo hat on the left and his partner not far behind in khakis and black hat) I'm a firm believer that crowdsourcing is going to find out the details on these guys much faster than a government agency trying to collect all this digital data and do it themselves.
- hallmark 14y ago
  First off, I completely fail to see the partner in khakis and black hat in this photo. Second, the mirrored imgur photo is much smaller and compressed than the original photo to which the New York Times linked. If a crowd of people are attempting to identify an individual, it's unfortunate if many are looking at a suboptimal image. This should be a lesson NOT to use imgur for such a task. Just throw the original on S3 behind CloudFront. Original, high quality photo: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/thelede/posts/suspect-number-2.JPG http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/thelede/posts/susp...

107 points by martin_ 14y ago

Their site is absolutely hammered right now. The live video feed here (http://live.reuters.com/Event/Boston_Marathon_Explosion?live http://live.reuters.com/Event/Boston_Marathon_Explosion?live) has details. They have video of 2 suspects, one of which set down an "unusually heavy" backpack.

vonmoltke 14y ago
Someone has an Imgur mirror of the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g

MichaelApproved 14y ago

For me, the HN part of the story is that the FBI servers are having trouble keeping up with the traffic to their site. Edit: Here's one of the responses I got while trying to load the FBI website ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to retrieve the requested URL the following error was encountered: Zero Sized Reply Footprint did not receive any data for this request. Footprint 4.8/FPMCP Generated Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:42:44 GMT by 8.12.217.126 (Footprint 4.8/FPMCP)

blaines 14y ago
In addition the linked footprint site is not responding!
underdown 14y ago
the link up top is a malformed url - looks like maybe a bad c&p http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multip... worked for me
- blaines 14y ago
  Yep your link (kind of) worked. It's not loading quickly or entirely.
- martin_ 14y ago
  Wrong - it may look like a bad c&p, but if you go to fbi.gov and check the link on the right hand side, it is, in fact correct. The servers are just struggling right now with the assets, now mine are cached it loads instantly.
  - underdown 14y ago
    ya - guess you're right - what a redundant url.
danso 14y ago
Yeah, I hate to say it, but my first thought was: "Is there no one at the FBI who has ever heard of a CDN or S3 or even Imgur to upload static assets to?" The issue at hand isn't a national emergency (because the attacks happened a few days ago with the suspects apparently quiet) but one of these days, they'll need a more robust way to disseminate info.
- pekk 14y ago
  To be fair, I don't think that many people on HN are facing the kind of traffic spike the FBI site just got.
- slg 14y ago
  While these photos and video are the opposite of confidential, I am not the least bit surprised that the FBI wants to keep the FBI's data on the FBI's servers given the nature of their business.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    The website is public. There's nothing keeping them from having using a CDN or other caching service or, better yet, setting up their own caching servers to handle the load better.
- icpmacdo 14y ago
  I would find it quite amusing if the FBI was posting to imgur.
martin_ 14y ago
The BBC have mirrored some of the data: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22211190 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22211190
sinnerswing 14y ago
cnn.com, nytimes.com, nbcnews.com
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  That's not the point. The public should be able to get the information directly from the FBI's website without it being filtered through the media. You'd think the FBI would be able to setup some server caching to handle traffic spikes to their website.
D9u 14y ago
The site loads up fine for me, and an Etherape scan shows that the site uses more than just one or two servers.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
brownbat 14y ago
The primary release is from the fbi YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=M80DXI932OE http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=M... There are two unblurred suspects in that video, and the FBI site has some other grainy photos of the two suspects.
blhack 14y ago
If anybody is looking for a mirror... http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g

tkahn6 14y ago

Surveillance video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M80DXI932OE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M80DXI932OE This is from the FBI Youtube account and it's linked to on FBI.gov. Guy in the white cap is the one who they say placed the bomb.

martin_ 14y ago
The second bomb. The first bomb is unknown, and they haven't stated why Suspect #1 is of interest
- c0ur7n3y 14y ago
  It appears to me that the two bebackpacked individuals are together. The second one loses his backpack in the footage. I assume the first has the first bomb in his backpack.
  - martin_ 14y ago
    A wise man once said: "Assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups"
    - raccer 14y ago
      lol, I wouldn't go so far as calling the villain in any Steven Seagal movie "a wise man".
  - rockdiesel 14y ago
    I've watched the footage a couple of times. I don't see either of them losing their backpacks. What part of the video are you seeing suspect #2 without his backpack?
    - c0ur7n3y 14y ago
      You know what you're right. Thankfully, I'm not on the investigation team.

tych0 14y ago

It's interesting that Carmen Ortiz is the (a?) US Attorney who is working on this. I would have thought they were compartmentalized by type of crime a bit more.

rhizome 14y ago
It's regional, and she's the boss of that region.
- tych0 14y ago
  Yeah, I guess I had no idea USAs were segmented like that. Would it not make more sense to have them segmented by type of law, since they're all arguing in federal courts anyway? (Obviously I know nothing about law :-)
  - danso 14y ago
    There are divisions by type of crime (financial, terrorism, government corruption, capital murder) but these types of crime often overlap and thus require overlapping resources and personnel from a DA's office...and someone has to be the person who decides how and what to allocate to each case. This is not much different than police departments, which have separate departments for patrol, homicide, burglary, vice, internal affairs, etc....no matter how the squads are organized, there is still a chief and/or a commissioner who makes the policy and management decisions and who makes the official public statements.
  - pyre 14y ago
    | Would it not make more sense to have them segmented | by type of law, since they're all arguing in federal | courts anyway She probably has many specialized areas under her, but she's at the top of that particular power structure.
anigbrowl 14y ago
No, the US attorney is a per-state office. They're like attorneys-general for Federal law.

dakrisht 14y ago

So I take the photos aren't clear enough and/or the FBI doesn't have the facial recognition capabilities (read not in the database) to identify these fuckers? Can anyone elaborate on the scope of facial recognition technologies used by law enforcement? NSA surely has something powerful... Also - cell towers - they can look at logs for the time period when these guy were on the phone and nail down a list of suspects, etc. Wonder what their approach is here. Clearly enlisting the public to help is key but I'm sure they have a variety of technologies to find these fucks.

cglace 14y ago
unless they were using burners
- DoggettCK 14y ago
  Or aren't the bombers, but just suspects for the time being.
  - pyre 14y ago
    They don't have to be the bombers to have been using burner phones.
- dakrisht 14y ago
  True good point, damn burners. Two gigantic idiots - walking the streets together, around corners carrying heavy backpacks. Can't fathom how they didn't know with todays surveillance and a million people taking photos that they wouldn't get spotted.
  - mentat 14y ago
    Because two friends don't walk streets together carrying backpacks... Because the FBI is always accurate in their information...
  - nosequel 14y ago
    Two reasons, they might not care to get away with it, or these aren't the people responsible.

LammyL 14y ago

Does anyone know if the crowd sourcing of suspects on 4chan the other day picked out the same suspects the FBI announced today?

planetjones 14y ago
No they didn't
pyre 14y ago
The source material here looks to be CCTV cameras, which were probably not posted online.
yuvadam 14y ago
No, neither of these suspects came up on 4chan or reddit. There seem to be no real hi-res images of these suspects, except for a photo which just showed up of suspect at site #1 [1] [1] - http://imgur.com/a/34wtj http://imgur.com/a/34wtj
- themckman 14y ago
  Gosh that'd be eerie if it turns out to be these guys knowing they walked right past you and your friends and to have a photograph of it.
kayge 14y ago
They were pretty close. The 4chan suspect had a forward-facing white baseball cap. The FBI suspect has a rear-facing white baseball cap. These kinds of minor inaccuracies are fairly common in crowdsourced solutions.

craigerrington 14y ago

There's some photos on this FBI page of a 17 year old kid, who was fingered by our internet detectives - and has already come forward to clear his name http://news.yahoo.com/teen-am-not-boston-marathon-bomber-175755674--abc-news-topstories.html http://news.yahoo.com/teen-am-not-boston-marathon-bomber-175...

Kylekramer 14y ago
These are pretty clearly different people than the 17 year old. The Yahoo article is currently confusing cause it has photos of the actual two suspects and none of the person who came forward on the story, but the person who came forward isn't in the FBI photos.
- grandalf 14y ago
  are you sure?

phreanix 14y ago

Mirrored on imgur: http://imgur.com/irnkk5e http://imgur.com/irnkk5e

tunesmith 14y ago

Just the fact that they're young makes me think international rather than domestic. If they're bombers they don't exactly seem the conspiratorial old bitter unabomber type.

teamonkey 14y ago
If they're international then the FBI shouldn't need to crowdsource the identities of these people. They will at least have fingerprints and facial photographs of these guys.
- kevincennis 14y ago
  Wait - what?
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    I assume he is talking about passport photos and whatnot. Of course they could have gone to Canada and simply driven across the boarder at any number of places without anyone around for miles. Or they could have come in from Mexico without papers, like thousands of others do all the time.
  - ef4 14y ago
    "U.S. Department of State consular officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers collect biometric information (digital fingerprints and a photograph) from all non-U.S. citizens between the ages of 14 and 79, with some exceptions, when they apply for visas or arrive at major U.S. ports of entry." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Visitor_and_Immigrant_Status_Indicator_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Visitor_and_Immi...
- Shivetya 14y ago
  only if they entered through proper means. Its just hop and skip across that Northern border.
  - 14y ago

danso 14y ago

The handling of these photos has been very interesting...since early this morning, the FBI have been telling the press that they do have good footage of the suspects...but they didn't release it until the end of the day, at least 12 hours later. Assuming that the FBI had total control of this release schedule (and that'a a big if), I don't see the strategy of this. Even if they were 99% sure that they had legit footage of possible suspects, why announce that, until they are good and ready (i.e. within an hour) to release them to the public? In fast-moving crime scenes, the strategy is usually to withhold as many facts of the crime from the public until a good suspect has been nabbed...among other things, this prevents people from claiming to have witnessed specifics when in fact, they only saw them on TV or heard about it in the news. When a witness (or suspect) tells the police a fact that has been withheld from the public, that's a tool for the police to use to determine a witness's reliability. In the case we have now, the suspected bombers have had at least 12 hours notice that the FBI had working images of them. Even if it were a complete bluff...what would be the point? Isn't it better to keep the suspects in as much ignorance as possible? It may be that at least one of them is dumb and complacent enough to think they've gotten away with it. But this is a new age of news dissemination, so maybe the FBI was just flying by the seat of their pants. Part of me thinks that they did have a suspect/person of interest all this time (since yesterday's erroneous reports) and that this release is a partial ruse to flush out a co-conspirator (who, if he/she believes the press conference, thinks that the FBI has no one in custody yet).

whiskeychaser 14y ago
Maybe they are putting these pics out knowing full well that they are not suspects and they already have the real suspects either in custody or are on their trail. This release could be a bluff. Wouldn't be the first time.
- danso 14y ago
  That's what the cynical person in me is thinking. However, the realistic person in me is thinking: if that is the case, then the FBI released these photos knowing full well that innocent men who look at all similar to these blurry photos are now at risk of getting beaten/murdered...which would not help the investigation.

ConceitedCode 14y ago

Is there anyway to "stitch" together the photos to improve quality? Like filling in details on the hat for instance. I could have sworn I have seen similar technology before.

blhack 14y ago
I believe there actually is! Isn't this part of the new version of Adobe Photoshop?

pkfrank 14y ago

I'm disappointed in the technical solution for uploading footage at www.BostonMarathonTips.FBI.gov It would be very powerful if they had a public-(upload-only)-dropbox where folks could drop relevant footage in a seamless manner.

duskwuff 14y ago

I'm amused to see that the FBI has a YouTube account, and posted the surveillance video on there. :)

themckman 14y ago

I'm curious, I watched the conference on cnn.com and there was some guy going off about the FBI lying and waiving around photographs that the press seemed to swarm after the official press conference was over. He said a website a few times, but I never got it. Did anyone else see this or know who he was?

fiatpandas 14y ago
I don't know who he was but the site he was screaming out was infowars.com. I think he was trying to draw attention to the photos you may have seen of the black backpack special ops guys who popped up in a few images
- bluepen44 14y ago
  Curious article. Though now I do wonder why those guys were there..
  - fiatpandas 14y ago
    I really don't think there's a big conspiracy with them. I think the article correctly identified them as members of a private security firm, but I really just think the city authorities hired them to assist with protecting the race, which probably explains why one of them appeared to be walking around with a radiation detector.

WestCoastJustin 14y ago

These photos [0] seem better as you can click on the high-res option! I am only running linux but do you think the SmartDeblur program (Mac/Win) [3] would work here? Some cool examples [1] [2]. [4] seems like the best option for the SmartDeblur. [0] http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston/photos http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multip... [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2221466/SmartDeblur-Download-app-blurs-fuzzy-images-amazing-results.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2221466/Smart... [2] http://en.paperblog.com/smartdeblur-will-work-magic-on-your-blurry-photos-333803/ http://en.paperblog.com/smartdeblur-will-work-magic-on-your-... [3] https://github.com/Y-Vladimir/SmartDeblur https://github.com/Y-Vladimir/SmartDeblur [4] http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston/image/suspect-2-full-length-front-view-high-res http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multip...

Ives 14y ago
I tried it with both the stable version the github page links to and the latest beta version on http://smartdeblur.net/ http://smartdeblur.net/. Other than changing the blurryness to blockyness, it doesn't seem to do a whole lot. [1] Maybe it works better on motion blur e.g. because with motion blur all of the information is still there (just overlayed or convoluted in some other way), while this image is just an interpolated version of a smaller image that doesn't contain as much information. It's definitely possible that someone else might be able to change some program settings for the better though. [1] http://imgur.com/DnkbL3V http://imgur.com/DnkbL3V with a 100x100px kernel and 51% smooth in the v2.0 beta. Not exactly an improvement
- PatHyatt 14y ago
  After playing with SmartDeblur myself I concur with this finding. No betterment to be had.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

Reddit seems to have already identified Black Hat's hat. Assume the FBI had already, but interesting how fast the crowd works on details like that. http://i.imgur.com/D9tSDUf.jpg http://i.imgur.com/D9tSDUf.jpg

skeletonjelly 14y ago
Link to the thread? Edit: Nevermind. Found it http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cmt5j/video_of_suspects_in_marathon_bombing_available/ http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cmt5j/video_of_suspec...
jaydub 14y ago
I wonder if some sort of image processing could be done to further clear the images of the face given the belief of how the hat ought to look?
- incision 14y ago
  I had the same thought. You'd think that knowing accurate dimensions and features of something so nearby could be used to gauge distortion on the face. Likewise, perhaps some kind of computer vision could quickly search for the distinctive pattern of that hat in other images/video.

aj700 14y ago

When the Met(ropolitan Police) or Gendarmerie Nationale or Carabinieri raid a property, the terrorists they are looking for have only household improvised weapons. Every European is today, once again glibly pointing this out (touché). When they are in the US, given the behaviour [le mot juste] of congress today, is it surprising that they can and so will shoot back? Of course they will. It is inexplicable and totally bizarre to the rest of the world that they are lethally "armed and dangerous" because they ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO BE. "We don't care that the world things we are all immovably, constitutionally crazy" is such a weird position. You seem not to. One nation demonstrably under the NRA. Americans seem to actually think that these weekly gun massacres happen everywhere else too. They just don't. It is now absolutely clear that you can kill hundreds in a day with a few of your own guns, and the federal government will spring into not the tiniest bit of action.

lukifer 14y ago
The atrocity in Boston has not the slightest thing to do with gun policy. Any nutjob can create homemade bombs whether or not guns are legal.
- msandford 14y ago
  And the people who planted the bombs are definitely NOT law abiding citizens. If they're willing to kill a bunch of random, innocent bystanders how much more willing do you think they'd be to kill law enforcement bent on their apprehension? Once they decide they're willing to break the law and blow up bombs it stands to reason they'd be comfortable procuring some illegal guns as well.

asynchronous13 14y ago

In the video, there's a girl wearing a yellow pullover and a large back-pack that is a little behind the guy labeled as a suspect. She shows up in each of the scenes (at 0:08, 0:20, 0:29) Is there information outside of this video that makes him more suspicious than her? Otherwise, I'd say both of them exhibit the same level of innocence/guilt.

Goladus 14y ago
Is there information outside of this video that makes him more suspicious than her? Most assuredly. I suspect they have video of these two guys dropping their bags. The photos they released are so that people can identify them.

blantonl 14y ago

So far, crowdsourcing has identified one high resolution image that shows both suspects running from the scene: http://i.imgur.com/I1dF69f.jpg http://i.imgur.com/I1dF69f.jpg (Note the guy with the white polo hat on the left and his partner not far behind in khakis and black hat) I'm a firm believer that crowdsourcing is going to find out the details on these guys much faster than a government agency trying to collect all this digital data and do it themselves.

hallmark 14y ago
First off, I completely fail to see the partner in khakis and black hat in this photo. Second, the mirrored imgur photo is much smaller and compressed than the original photo to which the New York Times linked. If a crowd of people are attempting to identify an individual, it's unfortunate if many are looking at a suboptimal image. This should be a lesson NOT to use imgur for such a task. Just throw the original on S3 behind CloudFront. Original, high quality photo: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/thelede/posts/suspect-number-2.JPG http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/thelede/posts/susp...