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This is cool and all, but I can't help but be reminded of the hunt for Boston Marathon bombers. Sure, maybe the author's heart is in the right place, but Random

by moskie 12y ago

This is cool and all, but I can't help but be reminded of the hunt for Boston Marathon bombers. Sure, maybe the author's heart is in the right place, but Random Person On The Internet could easily have gotten something wrong, that seems intuitively correct to the author and a general audience (us), but is in fact incorrect. Which makes me inclined to instead leave stuff like this up to the professionals. (appeal to authority, i know, but... getting this stuff right is important.)

joelrunyon 12y ago
I think this is more research than akin the boston marathon hunt. This guy doesn't have access to bombs and I would assume the people who do have access to them would probably fact check it with some higher-level intelligence.
Bluestrike2 12y ago
I think the difference between the two scenarios is largely dependent upon the source materials and the quality of the analysis. The author knew that the photographs were authentic because they were sourced directly from ISIS. It wasn't a matter of determining who--out of many potential matches--might have fight a given profile (young male, bomb and backpack as people were searching for after Boston), but comparing the photographs to others in order to find matching geographical points of reference. The bridges in the photographs weren't going to change their looks. Even if you grant the possibility of a false positive in one instance, the use of multiple source photographs and different angles all combine to increase the accuracy of the analysis. This analysis in this blog post was thorough, precise, and clear. Professional. The responses to Boston, on the other hand, lacked such rigor and amounted to little more than a witch-hunt, despite the fact that most of those going through photographs were simply trying to help. You're right, in a sense, that it's easy for this type of analysis to be mishandled. But that's dependent upon the analyst and the materials they're working from. Rather than fret in this case, I'm happy to support it. Good examples should always be highlighted and praised, if only in the hope that such examples might help prevent poor examples in the future. A bit of a pipe-dream, but it's a nice one to imagine.

by moskie 12y ago

joelrunyon 12y ago

I think this is more research than akin the boston marathon hunt. This guy doesn't have access to bombs and I would assume the people who do have access to them would probably fact check it with some higher-level intelligence.

Bluestrike2 12y ago

I think the difference between the two scenarios is largely dependent upon the source materials and the quality of the analysis. The author knew that the photographs were authentic because they were sourced directly from ISIS. It wasn't a matter of determining who--out of many potential matches--might have fight a given profile (young male, bomb and backpack as people were searching for after Boston), but comparing the photographs to others in order to find matching geographical points of reference. The bridges in the photographs weren't going to change their looks. Even if you grant the possibility of a false positive in one instance, the use of multiple source photographs and different angles all combine to increase the accuracy of the analysis. This analysis in this blog post was thorough, precise, and clear. Professional. The responses to Boston, on the other hand, lacked such rigor and amounted to little more than a witch-hunt, despite the fact that most of those going through photographs were simply trying to help. You're right, in a sense, that it's easy for this type of analysis to be mishandled. But that's dependent upon the analyst and the materials they're working from. Rather than fret in this case, I'm happy to support it. Good examples should always be highlighted and praised, if only in the hope that such examples might help prevent poor examples in the future. A bit of a pipe-dream, but it's a nice one to imagine.