The Boston Bombings: Case Study Analysis

Introduction

Undoubtedly, technological advancement is the twenty-first-century revolution. Technological advancements have made life interesting, joyful and sad at almost equal measures. A good illustration of such a balanced scenario is vivid when one explores the use of technology in terrorism; both propagating and combating terror activities. Technology can aid terror combating efforts as much as it can promote terror activities. The Boston Bombing is a good case that illustrates this point. The incident was a product of social media. The masterminds, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (who were brothers), confessed to having been self-radicalized courtesy of extremist content they accessed through the internet. Interestingly, technology, in turn, played a crucial role in providing valuable intelligence to law enforcement officers who moved swiftly to confront and apprehend the bombers. However, although technologies such as the CCTV cameras and social media coverage greatly boosted the law enforcement apprehension efforts, the same technologies contributed to massive erroneous identifications, and in fact, their applications have let to infringement of civil liberties.

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Use of CCTV Cameras in the Public Sphere

Three days after the Boston bombing, the FBI released CCTV footage showing two men walking while loaded with rucksacks a few moments before the explosions. They were identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev who became the main suspects and eventually were established to be the bombers. CCTV cameras were immediately seen as a great technology that would help in tracking and bringing to book suspects in such instances, and what followed was a temptation to increase CCTV camera surveillance in the town. In fact, in the 2015 Boston Marathon, the law enforcement had installed several cameras to cover the event especially near the finish line where the two explosions had occurred in 2013. For example, one of the high definition video cameras was installed by the LandTel Communications on top of a roof of a tall office building which focused on the finish line. The camera was linked to a computer network at a satellite office in an undisclosed location for police to remotely watch and control the camera (Terry & Greg, 2013).

Even though expansion of the use of CCTV cameras in security surveillance after has raised privacy concerns and attracted numerous criticism, the Boston bombing and the value of the surveillance cameras in the apprehension of bombers has continued to inspire the use of such cameras. For a long time, videos have been thought to be crucial during investigations. According to Adams and Ferryman (2015), video evidence is the new standard in dealing with crime that occurs in the public because it holds massive evidence than any other source like an eyewitness. This was confirmed during the Boston bombing the CCTV footage provided enough evidence to trace, arrest and charge the bombers. It is human nature to replicate successful results. As such, the CCTV camera use widely expanded after the Boston bombing because of its effectiveness in capturing videos of criminals performing terror activities and aiding the law enforcement in identifying and arresting the culprits. CCTV cameras proved beyond reasonable doubt that they are effective and will yield more better results in future by not only leading to the apprehension of terror suspects but possibly aiding in tracking and arresting of those planning to execute criminal activities.

CrowdsourcingCrowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving approach whereby duties traditionally assigned to employees in an organization or members of the community or a designated group are outsourced to a loosely defined crowd of individuals via an open hall (Simperl, 2015). This process takes different forms from peer production where work is undertaken collaboratively to public competitions where only valued contributions are recognized or participatory sensing where sensor networks and mobile devices are employed in gathering vast amounts of information (Simperl, 2015).

Crowdsourcing is a concept that has been applied in various domains. It has been used challenges and prizes rewarding ideas for innovation and product development, gamification to drive employees' motivation as well as paid microtasks for completing routine content work such as data entry (Dawson & Bynghall, 2014). Crowdsourcing is perhaps a new concept of attaining a goal through contributions of various individuals. This concept is not new. It has been applied as early as pre-2006. For example, Wikipedia has been sustained through sourcing of content from various individuals around the world or world "crowd." However, "online crowdsourcing" is a new phenomenon that has resulted from the recent intensified use of web, smartphones and wireless sensors that potentially mobilize thousands of people within a short period of time (Simperl, 2015). It means that an organization interested in crowdsourcing can reach out to a global pool of human resources who can contribute towards completion of a task.

As observed above, crowdsourcing is a dynamic concept which is applicable to various domains. It was not surprising when it was applied by the law enforcement officers during the Boston bombing. Since crowdsourcing is a concept that can work well in an age where smartphones are widely used by the crowds, its applicability in the case of Boston bombing was undoubted. In the aftermath of the bombing, a parallel investigation was conducted by a huge movement of online sleuths or cyber-vigilantes that sought to harness the collective knowledge and resources form the crowds. The online sleuths were pooling data and resources to aid police in the investigation and lead to the apprehension of the suspects as soon as possible. Such online platforms drew various members of the society some of which were bomb experts whereas others were smart at connecting links to arrive at suspects. The sleuths pooled pictures of the crime scene some of which were useful for analysis that would lead to spotting the bombers.

Nonetheless, crowdsourcing led to erroneous identifications for potential suspects in the Boston bombing. For example, some of the people in the online sleuths gathered information that pointed to suspicion of a Moroccan man who was captured on a picture in a suspicious vehicle. Likewise, other members mistakenly identified Sunil Tripathi (who was a missing American student) as the perpetrator (Nhan, Huey & Broll, 2017). The reason why crowdsourcing led to numerous erroneous identifications was the simple fact of rampant suspicion. The online users focused more on purportedly suspicious individuals and activities (Nhan et al., 2017). The big mistake was a failure to distinguish the fact that so many activities were going on and much of them would be rendered suspicious because they would resemble that of the perpetrator. For example, most of the individuals turned to the wearing of the backpacks as a suspicious activity after it emerged that the explosives were certainly carried on a backpack before being delivered and detonated (Nhan et al., 2017). Unfortunately, many people were wearing backpacks carrying their personal utilities considering such a sporting event. Anyone captured on camera wearing a backpack would then be easily labeled a suspect when in the real sense he or she was not. Therefore, rampant suspicion was mainly the reason for erroneous identifications of suspects based on crowdsourcing.

Role of Social Media in the Coverage of the Bombings

The social media has become part of life for the members of the public today. As such, it was at the center stage of the Boston bombing playing a huge role in the coverage of the incident. Ideally, the media is expected to objectively report the news and keep the public informed on the terror event (Martin, 2017). However, the media could easily be turned to a means of publicizing terrorism cause, communicating the terrorist messages and possible recruiting innocent members of the society to join terror groups or inflict extremism.

During the Boston bombing, the social media was used extensively to cover the whole incident and inform the public of every step taken especially by the police. As the Boston police officers received the news of the incident, they realized the crucial role the social media would play in keeping the public informed. As a result, the police commissioner Davis directed the Media Relations Office to get ready to employ all forms of social media to deliver accurate and complete information to the public (Iii, Alves & Sklansky, 2014). What followed thereafter was the use of police official Twitter to inform the public of the incident and informing the public of the road closures, police activities and news conferences. Through their Twitter, police asked for assistance from the public in the identification and capturing of the suspects. The police also used Twitter to inform the public of the casualty toll and investigation status as well as reassuring the public and expressing sympathy to victims and families (Iii et al., 2014). Social media was also used by enforcement officers in distinguishing false and real leads to the apprehension of the suspects (Iii et al., 2014). After the killing of the first suspect, the police used social media to disseminate several images of the remaining suspect to help in getting leads to where he was hiding. The social media was also being used by the public to conduct an investigation into the incident and identifying potential suspects. Moreover, the social media was used to send out comforting messages to the victims and families (Brogan, 2015).

On the other hand, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been using social media to self-radicalize and learning how to make terrorist weapons. Social media is a powerful tool for delivering information which the terrorists have used to target millions of youth all over the world to radicalize them, recruit and train them to execute attacks (Martin, 2017). This became evident when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev confessed to having learned how to make the explosive he used in the Boston bombing through the social media.

Technology and Civil Liberties

Use of CCTV camera surveillance, crowdsourcing, and social media for security surveillance by the law enforcement was so widespread and successful in apprehending the Boston bombers. However, the aforementioned technologies have the potential of infringing civil liberties. For instance, as earlier noted, the police installed more high-definition CCTV cameras on top of high buildings to record videos of the entire Boston area. These cameras send the videos to satellites at undisclosed areas where they are watched by police. Several other similar cameras have been installed in Boston residential neighborhoods. Whereas the cameras were installed with positive intent, privacy concerns are triggered when such cameras can provide a surveillance of innocent individuals without their consent. For instance, law enforcement can track an individual from the moment he or she leaves her home in the morning, all the day until when he or she returns home. The Constitution guarantees the citizens' enjoyment of civil liberties outlined in the Bill of rights, 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments which include freedom from arbitrary interference in one's pursuits by the government or an individual. Tracking individuals all day through CCTV in the name of security surveillance and thwarting terrorism amounts to arbitrary interference which is equivalent to infringement of civil liberties.

Conclusion

Technologies such as the CCTV cameras, social media and crowdsourcing proved supportive during the entire investigation process and apprehension of the b...