Following April’s Boston Marathon bombings, many people around the world wanted to help in any way they could. Previously, there would have been little but financial assistance that they could have offered.
However, with the advent of high-quality cameras on smartphone devices, and services such as YouTube and Flickr, it was not long before the well-known online collectives such as Reddit and 4chan mobilized members of the public to ask them to review hundreds of thousands of photos and videos taken on the day to try and identify potential suspects.
This came about following announcements that the incendiary devices were stored in pressure cookers within black bags or backpacks — so users knew what it was they were looking for.
Two potential suspects were at first incorrectly identified (I say incorrectly as the same individuals were seen with the same bags after the blast). Two further separate sightings of other individuals were also widely circulated, and led to the apprehension of two persons for further questioning by the authorities.
This is not the first time that 4chan has performed such a task, having previous success in tracking down several people guilty of posting videos of animal cruelty.
Impact and utilization
Here in the UK, we recently had the successful launch of Facewatch, and we have seen other regional attempts — such as Greater Manchester Police’s services and appeals app — to use the goodwill of members of the public to help trace, identify, or report suspected criminals and the crimes that they commit.
Does this herald a new era in transparency? Are we seeing the first steps towards a more transparent future where rapid information flow means that there really is nowhere to hide? Or are we instead falling into some Orwellian society construct where people are scared to speak out or think for themselves?
However this plays out in the long term, the here and now is that rather than many hundreds of officers and investigators poring through millions of images, the “many eyes” approach of 4Chan has potentially led to a swift identification which may not have been possible with the resources that the police hold.
In the future, it may be possible to automatically send images directly to the smartphone or other mobile device of a person as they arrive in a specific area, offering a reward if they are able to assist in locating an individual. We could see voluntary exercises in a similar fashion for military targets if we were to find ourselves at war.
Consider also that there are already well-established crowdsourcing models for design, translation, neuron mapping, and studying space, among many others.
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