{"id":747379,"date":"2013-04-19T10:28:06","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T14:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=632529"},"modified":"2013-04-19T10:28:06","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T14:28:06","slug":"when-the-search-for-the-boston-bombing-suspects-comes-to-your-neighborhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/747379","title":{"rendered":"When the search for the Boston bombing suspects comes to your neighborhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first call came at 2:38 a.m., which I missed. Caller ID said “Watertown Emergency.” The second came a few minutes later; it was a robocall from the chief of police warning us of an “active incident” in East Watertown, telling folks to stay at home and not open the door for anyone not in a uniform.<\/p>

Try to sleep after that. A quick check of Twitter showed there had been a shootout and possible explosions in East Watertown and that the suspects were also involved in the\u00a0shooting of an MIT campus police officer<\/a> late Thursday night. The officer died.<\/p>

\"Shootings<\/a><\/p>

I live in Watertown, a town just west of Boston where overnight police have converged in their hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers. The town — and to some degree the metropolitan area including Boston, Cambridge, Newton, and Waltham — is now in full lockdown. My house is barely a mile from what appears to be a paramilitary operation but I can hear and see nothing of it. Nor did I hear the gunfire and explosions <\/a>that rocked East Watertown in the early morning hours, and which neighbors captured on cell phone video.<\/p>

In the hours after the robo-call, there was the usual flurry of information and misinformation on Twitter as well as the TV stations — one of the suspects was erroneously identified on Reddit and other sites<\/a> as missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi. One of the local TV outlets, after spending a half hour rehashing what had been reported and misreported by others, then dropped the feed of the State Police’s statement during the night. Mind boggling.<\/p>

Friends and family of missing Brown student Sunil Tripathi are frustrated that he was falsely accused of the bombing: ow.ly\/kdZL2<\/a>—
Ted Nesi (@tednesi) April 19, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>

Folks quickly turned to police scanner apps<\/a> to get the lowdown. (Ustream then picked up\u00a0another app <\/a>here<\/a>.) That sparked a debate on just how responsible that is.<\/p>

Police scanner just went down. It's obvious they are trying to keep their operations more private. #watertown<\/a>—
Josh Varela (@JVarela13) April 19, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>

Finding out what happened required triangulation — as one Twitter correspondent put it, cops on the scanners are having conversations, they don’t know what’s going on either.<\/p>

Reports were all over the map. Both suspects of the Marathon bombing were involved; both were killed; one was captured, one was killed; the reality emerging this morning<\/a> is that one suspect,\u00a026-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was dead; the other, his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was at large wearing a suicide vest. Or not. The latter appears to be suspect number 2 (white hat guy) in the Boston Marathon bombings.<\/p>

What this shows is that proximity to an event means nothing in terms of accuracy unless you are an actual eyewitness. The information I had a mile away was available to everyone.<\/p>

The lockdown continues.<\/p>

Photos courtesy Getty Images<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>
\"\"

<\/a><\/p>

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:<\/strong>
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial<\/a>.<\/p>