Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Crime

FBI Releases Boston Bombing Suspect Images/Videos 416

An anonymous reader writes "The FBI has released images of what they say are two suspects with backpacks and ball caps. 'Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members of the suspects,' Special Agent Rick DesLauriers, the head of the FBI's Boston office said. 'And though it may be difficult, the nation is counting on those with information to come forward and provide it to us.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

FBI Releases Boston Bombing Suspect Images/Videos

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, 2013 @07:31PM (#43488459)

    http://i.imgur.com/I1dF69f.jpg left of the screen with white hat

    • by Narksos ( 1111317 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @07:51PM (#43488581)
      From TFA:

      For clarity, these images should be the only ones—the only ones—that the public should view to assist us. Other photos should not be deemed credible and unnecessarily divert the public’s attention in the wrong direction and create undue work for vital law enforcement resources.

      Though that appears to be the same person, please identify based upon the photos released by the FBI.

    • Appears that he still has his backpack by the way he's holding his arm.

    • Poor #2 (if he's innocent); that photo is from an angle that makes it impossible to tell if he still has the backpack.

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      high res, too. Well spotted.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, 2013 @08:16PM (#43488749)

      If you don't have the picture expanded, he looks a lot like Bieber. Please let it be Bieber...

    • saved and forwarded to the FBI...
    • I dont know, there are some pics that show a man in a hat 20 min before the bomb went off with a backpack and then a few min before without the backback, who looked middle eastern.... these photos the FBI are psuhing that claim to be of a man who put his bag down where the bomb went off, the bag didnt look like the one that blew up, and they havent shown us him putting the bag down (though they claim to have that)

      im not trying to claim anything about this that isnt real, im just saying that the people the
    • by cyn1c77 ( 928549 )

      He's the only one not running or looking a bit disturbed by the blast in that picture too.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    There are cheap cameras today that do full HD, low artifacts, and run 30 frames a second. These images were from old equipment and software. The smudged faces is that. They should be replaced. All replaced. The city I live has less than one FPS on its non-traffic cameras. It's pathetic what salesman push on the HLS-cash-infused cities when cheaper, and much better, hardware and software is available right now. You get what you pay for, and sometimes, not even that.

    • I'm surprised they couldn't clean up the images more. Clearly you can't do much with a single image since there's only so much information, but with a video you're getting a slightly different set of information with each frame, I always figured you could do a mapping/averaging of all the different shots and extract something a little cleaner. Unfortunately it looks like that's not the case (or at least it doesn't work well here).

    • by lucm ( 889690 )

      There are cheap cameras today that do full HD, low artifacts, and run 30 frames a second. These images were from old equipment and software. The smudged faces is that. They should be replaced.

      No need for that. The police just has to call the crime lab at CSI Miami or Chloe down at the CTU. If all the moles have been properly smoked out from those organizations it should be possible to get 3D pictures of both suspects.

    • by hawguy ( 1600213 )

      There are cheap cameras today that do full HD, low artifacts, and run 30 frames a second. These images were from old equipment and software. The smudged faces is that. They should be replaced. All replaced. The city I live has less than one FPS on its non-traffic cameras. It's pathetic what salesman push on the HLS-cash-infused cities when cheaper, and much better, hardware and software is available right now. You get what you pay for, and sometimes, not even that.

      These look like local business security cams -- who is going to pay the businesses to replace the cameras and DVR's every year to keep up with the latest and greatest technology? Or do you think the government should blanket every public space with hi-def facial recognition cameras covering every inch of every public space so they are prepared for the next time this happens?

      Don't forget to factor in the storage needs - my "action cam" generates 8GB of data/hour for 1080p 30fps -- if a small municipality has

      • Occupy Wall Street showed that when the US Gov't wants a protest movement to go away, it does. So who really cares if we're being watched? What difference does it make from a practical standpoint. Plus, if we can catch these sort of things it's one less excuse for pointless wars against anybody with a turban and brown skin, and one less excuse for Patriot Acts.

        All you're really giving up anyway is the illusion of freedom you don't have. Real freedom is economic freedom, and OWS showed us who's really in
  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @07:46PM (#43488545) Journal
    The only 2 men with a black backpack that 4chan and reddit didn't accuse.
    • by unitron ( 5733 )

      To be fair to them, plenty of other sites picked out everyone with a backpack except those two as well.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        To be fair to them, plenty of other sites picked out everyone with a backpack except those two as well.

        To be fair to them, they aren't trained law enforcement officers with many years of experience identifying suspects. They shouldn't have been picking anyone out; They should have been submitting their photos, videos, and eyewitness accounts directly to the FBI instead of engaging in vigilantism.

        Everyone on 4Chan and Reddit who engaged in such activity should be ashamed of themselves -- they've engaged in modern-day witch hunting, with potentially deadly consequences. If I could, I'd reach through my compute

        • Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)

          by technomom ( 444378 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @09:07PM (#43489079)

          Even worse is the New York Post which posted the reddit/4chan pictures on their front page and said the pictures were being distributed by "Authorities" and "Law Enforcement". Not sure if reddit is the Authorities and 4chan Law Enforcement or the other way around.

        • Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Intropy ( 2009018 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @09:23PM (#43489179)

          I like the part where you discuss taking it upon yourself to find and punish people for taking it on themselves to find and punish people.

    • I believe 4chan's photos are all from the other bomb site, not where the FBI-released photos were taken.
  • There's a fine line between soliciting public support and encouraging vigilante justice.

    Though, if there ever was a time that we needed the detective [wikipedia.org] ... now might not be a bad choice.
    • by femtobyte ( 710429 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @07:57PM (#43488621)

      The government posts "most wanted" pictures for heinous crimes quite often, usually without dire consequences for either the perpetrator, or idiot members of the public getting themselves killed trying to nab violent psychopaths. I suspect these two have already gone into hiding --- they won't be obvious to the general public. But who they were and where they lived before the crime will be discovered really fast. However, I can see this type of situation getting messier in the future --- suppose the "unofficial crowd sourced intelligence gathering" had identified "suspects" on public message boards within 30 minutes of the incident (which I don't see as out-of-the-question for future incidents); then things could get awfully rough for any vague look-alikes in the area.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, 2013 @08:32PM (#43488841)

        While in general I agree with your post, one thing is terribly wrong.

        I suspect these two have already gone into hiding

        This assumes that the men in the photos are guilty, please don't be another member of our society who convicts people in the court of public opinion, there's far too many Nancy Grace viewers already. How about "I suspect the people who carried out this crime have already gone into hiding" or something along those lines. Sorry if this comes off as pedantic.

        • by femtobyte ( 710429 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @08:36PM (#43488877)

          Not overly pedantic; point well taken. Consider my post above thus edited so far as Slashdot allows.

        • by ScottCooperDotNet ( 929575 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @10:37PM (#43489583)

          This sort of thing causes secondary terrorism [bostonherald.com] of those falsely accused.

          Photos of Salah Eddin Barhoum, 17, and friend Yassine Zaime were posted on websites whose users have been scouring marathon finish line photos for suspects. The two were also on the [New York] Post's front Thursday with the headline: "Bag men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon." The Post reported later Thursday that the pair weren't considered suspects. But Barhoum, a track runner at Revere High School, said he is convinced some will blame him for the bombings, no matter what.

          He said he was so fearful on Thursday that he ran back to the high school after a track meet when he saw a man in a car staring at him, talking into a phone. He said he won't feel safe until the bombers are caught. "I'm going to be scared going to school," Barhoum said. "Workwise, my family, everything is going to be scary."

    • There's a fine line between soliciting public support and encouraging vigilante justice.

      Well... the article does seem to make it pretty clear which side of the line they are on...

      We considered them to be armed and extremely dangerous. No one should approach them. No one should attempt to apprehend them except law enforcement. Let me reiterate that caution. Do not take any action on your own. If you see these men, contact law enforcement.

    • if there ever was a time that we needed the detective [wikipedia.org]...

      Fun fact: In Massachusetts, the Joker is known as "the Chowderhead."

  • For their sake (Score:3, Insightful)

    by amanaplanacanalpanam ( 685672 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @07:55PM (#43488615)
    I hope they're the ones that did it, because whether they are or not, in the eyes of a public starving for villains to blame they're now as good as guilty.
  • Ummm.... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 )

    You could identify anyone with those pics. Put a basecap on a dog and it should work if his muzzle ain't too long.

  • by sunking2 ( 521698 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @08:08PM (#43488691)
    They know the resolution stinks. What they are hoping for is that people will go through their personal photos that they took which are much better resolution and notice that one of them may be in the background.
    • by Dan667 ( 564390 )
      quite possible they may want to scare them to see if they make a mistake or tip themselves off.
  • As usual, with the camera being slightly above the target, the angle of these security cameras are fairly bad if the perp is wearing a hat. Seeing as cameras are now tiny, it's time to start mounting them at about the 5 foot level. It's so much easier to identify a person at that angle. This would explain why they're looking for somebody with a cell phone picture.
    • Clearly you're either 7' tall or don't spend a lot of time at parades if you think looking at everything from a 5' eye level in a crowded place is going to improve things.
      • It's 1000 times easier to see a face from 5' than from 7'. Especially if they're wearing a hat. Ask any photographer.
    • Re:Tough angle (Score:4, Insightful)

      by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @09:24PM (#43489193)

      One of the suspects was wearing his hat backwards in the video. Now really if you are wearing a hat to hide your face from security cams that is about as dumb a thing as you can do.

      The thing is that they may be able to hide and lie low etc. But the FBI doesn't forget.

  • by conspirator23 ( 207097 ) on Thursday April 18, 2013 @09:09PM (#43489095)

    I'm surprised that the doubting Thomases are getting so many mod points around here today. There is no better facial recognition system in the world than the human brain. The pictures are worthlessly low-res and indiscriminate? Someone who knows these individuals will correlate the physical details of the face, the expression, the height, haircut, posture, and clothing instantly and unconsciously. They will be recognized. Those acquaintances can see the forest. All we are getting is trees.

    And to cover the other criticism of why these two were chosen... Both were seen walking together with black backpacks. Then each one was seen individually right at one of the two bomb sites. In the case of suspect #2, there is video of him putting his backpack down and then walking away from it. Personally I agree that this is sufficient to refer to both individuals as "suspects."

  • OH SHIT (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, 2013 @10:42PM (#43489603)

    Oh shit, now there's a guy shooting police officers at MIT.
    http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/04/theres-shooter-loose-and-officer-down-mit/64379/

    • Re:OH SHIT (Score:5, Insightful)

      by artor3 ( 1344997 ) on Friday April 19, 2013 @04:05AM (#43490793)

      This shouldn't be modded off-topic. This has been confirmed to be the bombing suspects, armed with assault rifles and explosives. One is dead, having used a suicide vest, and the other (supect #2, white hat) is still being hunted by over 9000 cops. That's not a lame joke. That's the actual number of cops on the scene.

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend. -- Theophrastus

Working...