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| Authored by: Nick_UK on Friday, April 26 2013 @ 11:19 AM EDT |
This is the trouble now - people believe everything they read on the Internet is
'fact'. Wikipedia is one of the main culprits, purportedly an 'on line
encyclopaedia', but in fact has a lot of utter nonsense on its pages.
In the old days, before the web, (and perhaps even so now), the 'sensationalist
newspapers (aka red tops in the UK, Sun, Mirror, News of the World') published
utter tripe (and still do), but people know a lot of it is nonsense and ignore
it.
So why does the Internet hold so much 'belief'?
I dunno. Maybe I am getting too old and the younger generation are getting too
stupid.
Nick[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 26 2013 @ 11:52 AM EDT |
Interesting comment from the article:
What no one seems to notice
is that the combination of police and federal efforts to include the public in
providing information about a horrendous event actually resulted in the
identification and apprehension of suspects in less than four
days!
Assuming CNN has an accurate timeline combined with Wikipedia's timeline put
together:
Mon Apr 15, 2:49 pm edt: explosions occur
Thr Apr
18:
5:00 pm: Police release photos
11:00 pm: shootout at MIT
occurs
Fri Apr 19:
1:00 am: chase begins with shootout
2:00
am: police order residents to turn off cell phones
8:00 am: lockdown
begins
6:00 pm: lockdown ends
6:00 - 7:00 pm: resident goes for walk
and notices blood on boat
7:30 pm: police engage suspect
8:43 pm:
suspect taken into custody
Between 2:49 pm on Mon and 5:00 pm on Thr
police had sufficient information from the crowd sourcing activity to identify
potential suspects. Slightly over 3 days and 2 hours.
My comments on
that:
It goes to show how much of Society is willing to help. They don't
need to be forced. However, history shows that as Police clamp down on
activities and sacrifice freedoms this tends to change and the tighter the noose
on the publics collective necks - the more people willingly resist.
To
put that into context of current techology:
I'd like to have a device with
GPL tracking on it. However, I get to choose how that device will be used. No
external tracking is allowed unless I activate the feature and I must do so
explicitly. I should be able to use it to let me know my location on a map
without having to worry that the information is being logged and will be sent to
someone else's archives - whether that be the Police, Corporations or some other
entity.
I am willing to activate it so the Police can track it... but it's
my device and other then in that extreme situation (such as the Boston Marathon
Bombing) my personal safety, freedom and privacy outweigh any potential that
might occur. Just as many who had the opportunity were able to assist the
authorities in identifying the suspects.
My point: There are
certain freedoms and rights a civilized society must have if it wishes to view
itself as a Free society. Laws should not be created that ends up sacrificing
those freedoms and rights in order to more immediately handle an immediate
situation that is rare at the cost of freedoms and safety being sacrificed in
the smaller - more common - settings.
Other, less important, thoughts on
the situation:
Interesting they asked the public to turn off the cell
phones. I wonder if the cell phone signals were interfering with the technology
being used to track the suspect. If not, that raises some concerns the purpose
might have been to prevent civilians from taking photos. A troubling
thought.
Following the timeline it makes sense a lockdown occurred.
There had already been immediate violence with others and from the trail of
events it didn't look like the violence was going to slow down. So from that
perspective - it makes some sense the lockdown occurred.
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 26 2013 @ 12:16 PM EDT |
This has been obvious for some time, at least to anyone who actually follows
events. If you only check in when you hear a celebrity name or triple digit
death toll, then you probably neither notice or care.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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