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It seems disingenuous to say that facial recognition failed. As far as I can tell, all the images we had of these suspects were either very low-resolution, take

It seems disingenuous to say that facial recognition failed. As far as I can tell, all the images we had of these suspects were either very low-resolution, taken from angles, or both. Seems plausible that law enforcement didn't have any good candidate images from which to run a facial recognition search. > In the end it was mostly dumb luck What? Painstaking police work went in to getting images of these suspects, and the release of those photos are almost certainly what led to Thursday's events and, ultimately, the killing and capture of the suspects. > the city lockdown failed (the guy smoking the cigarette outside when he saw the blood was technically violating the lockdown) Firstly, the lockdown is what forced suspect #2 to hide out in a boat instead of fleeing the area. Secondly, and less importantly, the guy smoking a cigarette wasn't violating the lockdown. It had ended prior to him going outside. Was there luck involved? Of course. But there was also tremendous work done by a number of law enforcement agencies - without which, the suspects may never have been killed and captured.

ck2 14y ago
The brothers didn't leave the area, didn't go into hiding and were able to kill a campus officer and hijack a car, all without police finding them for a week. It was mostly dumb luck. It's not like they were hiding! Oh, and http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/03/27/hanover-police-trying-to-solve-home-homemade-bomb-mystery/ http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/03/27/hanover-police-trying-...
- kevincennis 14y ago
  They didn't go into hiding or leave because they didn't think they needed to. It seems pretty clear they they didn't want to be caught. From what I can tell, numerous people called in after the photos were released. Even if Thursday's events hadn't taken place, the police would have known the identities of both suspects shortly thereafter. It just seems crazy to me not to acknowledge the role of investigators in all of this and chock it up to luck. As for the edit you just made about the bombs in Hanover: are you implying there's a link to the Marathon bombers? Seems like conspiracy theory reaching - unless there's some sort of evidence you'd like to share.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    It just seems crazy to me not to acknowledge the role of investigators in all of this and chock it up to luck People do crazy things when they have made up their minds before the story even begins.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  The brothers didn't leave the area, didn't go into hiding and were able to kill a campus officer and hijack a car, all without police finding them for a week. I know you dislike law enforcement in general, but such casual exaggeration isn't helping your case. As of today, it's only 6 days since the bombings took place. The bombings happened late on a Monday morning. By Thursday evening, there were photos and videos of the suspects all over the media. There's a good chance that that's what flushed them out of cover.
- ryanhuff 14y ago
  You are wrong. We know that the younger brother returned to his school 60 miles away from the bombing, and was seen at his school partying it up the day before the MIT officer was killed. Please get your facts straight.
- openmx 14y ago
  Where do you get a week from? It was 3 days.
ajdecon 14y ago
> It seems disingenuous to say that facial recognition failed. As far as I can tell, all the images we had of these suspects were either very low-resolution, taken from angles, or both. Seems plausible that law enforcement didn't have any good candidate images from which to run a facial recognition search. "Failed" might be too strong, but I'd definitely say it's not yet ready for deployment. My impression is that the Boston marathon was extremely well-photographed from a variety of angles, by everything from nearby security cameras to folks in the crowd. This seems like the best kind of data set you'd reasonably expect outside a controlled environment (i.e., a lab or security checkpoint). If it's not yet good enough to at least flag possible matches based on this data, I'm not sure I believe it's ready for widespread use.
lttlrck 14y ago
It wasn't a lockdown, it was 'shelter in place'.

ck2 14y ago

The brothers didn't leave the area, didn't go into hiding and were able to kill a campus officer and hijack a car, all without police finding them for a week. It was mostly dumb luck. It's not like they were hiding! Oh, and http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/03/27/hanover-police-trying-to-solve-home-homemade-bomb-mystery/ http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/03/27/hanover-police-trying-...

kevincennis 14y ago
They didn't go into hiding or leave because they didn't think they needed to. It seems pretty clear they they didn't want to be caught. From what I can tell, numerous people called in after the photos were released. Even if Thursday's events hadn't taken place, the police would have known the identities of both suspects shortly thereafter. It just seems crazy to me not to acknowledge the role of investigators in all of this and chock it up to luck. As for the edit you just made about the bombs in Hanover: are you implying there's a link to the Marathon bombers? Seems like conspiracy theory reaching - unless there's some sort of evidence you'd like to share.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  It just seems crazy to me not to acknowledge the role of investigators in all of this and chock it up to luck People do crazy things when they have made up their minds before the story even begins.
anigbrowl 14y ago
The brothers didn't leave the area, didn't go into hiding and were able to kill a campus officer and hijack a car, all without police finding them for a week. I know you dislike law enforcement in general, but such casual exaggeration isn't helping your case. As of today, it's only 6 days since the bombings took place. The bombings happened late on a Monday morning. By Thursday evening, there were photos and videos of the suspects all over the media. There's a good chance that that's what flushed them out of cover.
ryanhuff 14y ago
You are wrong. We know that the younger brother returned to his school 60 miles away from the bombing, and was seen at his school partying it up the day before the MIT officer was killed. Please get your facts straight.
openmx 14y ago
Where do you get a week from? It was 3 days.

ajdecon 14y ago

> It seems disingenuous to say that facial recognition failed. As far as I can tell, all the images we had of these suspects were either very low-resolution, taken from angles, or both. Seems plausible that law enforcement didn't have any good candidate images from which to run a facial recognition search. "Failed" might be too strong, but I'd definitely say it's not yet ready for deployment. My impression is that the Boston marathon was extremely well-photographed from a variety of angles, by everything from nearby security cameras to folks in the crowd. This seems like the best kind of data set you'd reasonably expect outside a controlled environment (i.e., a lab or security checkpoint). If it's not yet good enough to at least flag possible matches based on this data, I'm not sure I believe it's ready for widespread use.

lttlrck 14y ago

It wasn't a lockdown, it was 'shelter in place'.