[wpasc]

You have to love the internet sometimes. Someone who works construction (as he stated) can develop a fun investigatory hobby just via the internet. The he can sign his work with a silly name like bear__f##ker (which I'm guessing is a reference to the movie super troopers).

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

On the other hand, it was people like this that once fingered the wrong person for the Boston Marathon bombing. It's all well and good as long as we remember not to put too much stock in it when it really matters.

[bgravinz]

Once an entire government worth of people led the US into war that cost millions of lives over fake reports of nukes.

It would be interesting to compare the damage caused by open, crowd-sourced investigative efforts against the damage caused of closed "authoritative" investigative efforts.

[matthewdgreen]

I think it’s amusing that the takeaway from this episode is “the intelligence agencies screwed up” and not “the intelligence agencies found no evidence, and then were directly pressured by their political masters to construct evidence to justify a desired military outcome.”

[ABeeSea]

It wasn’t even a real intelligent agency that drummed up support for war. It was a temporary agency created by Rumsfelds and Cheney with the Orwellian name of “Office of Special Plans.” They deliberately lied and misused raw intelligence signals to force us to war.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans

[scottlocklin]

There's some CIA disinfo right there. Rumsfeld and the neocon claque certainly ginned it up. The spooks though, said it would be a "slam dunk" that there would be WMD in Iraq. Here's Tenet grousing he was quoted:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cia-slamdunk-idUSN264...

[peanutz454]

So season 2 of TV Series 24 aired between October 29, 2002 May 20, 2003. Its main theme was US govt using fabricated evidence to attack middle eastern countries. The Office of Special Plans (OSP) existed from September 2002 to June 2003.

[eirki]

Reminds me of the "House of Special Purpose"

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=House_of_Special_...

[alasdair_]

The intelligence agencies repeatedly highlighted that the information was dubious at best.

The politically appointed heads of the intelligence agencies used this information to lie to the American public.

[artificialLimbs]

If the people at the agency had integrity, they would have immediately brought these concerns up the chain or public.

[skissane]

Who is to say they didn't bring them up the chain, and the chain just ignored them?

Try to bring issues to the public and they'll charge you with "espionage"/"mishandling classified information"/etc. Even if the charges don't succeed, you'll lose your career and the court case will ruin you.

[n0nc3]

Not just a court case though, an investigation or a "psych eval" are enough to ruin someone. Take a look at Russ Tice.

Also, read Ronan Farrow's piece from the New Yorker last week. They targeted a straight-laced DOJ lawyer with >20 years of experience. These organizations are out of control and pose a very serious threat to our freedom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Tice

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-a-cia-cove...

[harry8]

>Who is to say they didn't bring them up the chain, and the chain just ignored them?

And that is why those senior public servants with power in security agencies hate wikileaks and are willing to trash the constitutional protections for journalists to get Assange and also want to destroy Snowden so very badly.

[lostcolony]

See: Edward Snowden

[alasdair_]

They did. And they did again.

And the public had literally millions of people on the streets shouting about it.

And we still went to war anyway.

[mapmap]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair

[techer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)

[ckozlowski]

You might like this article then: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/magazine/colin-powell-ira...

[EGreg]

The thing is that we are always told there is evidence, like for sure, trust us:

Assad bombed his own people

The Russians hacked the election (a very broad statement, like “let’s believe in evolution”)

North Korea hacked SONY

All at very convenient times for our moves abroad and totally nonsensical from the point of view of motivation of the ones doing it (like Assad)

It’s like they don’t even try anymore. They just say “17 intelligence agencies all concur” with each other.

[dimitrios1]

Ha, if only they had the guts to be so specific! They just hid behind the blanket statement of "WMD"s and deflected any questions of specifics. Could have been nerve gas, could have been a biological agent. Everyone played their role (media and government) in deflecting attention away from the core issue that we were being bullshitted.

[chordalkeyboard]

> Everyone played their role (media and government) in deflecting attention away from the core issue that we were being bullshitted.

That would never happen today.

[CGamesPlay]

> war that cost millions of lives

Not to show support for the invasion of Iraq, but it was a far cry from "millions of lives". https://www.iraqbodycount.org

[gokceozantoptas]

I think the only cost is not the body count. One must look to the displaced populations, affects of the drop of GDP, etc. And how one thing led to another and in the end gave rise to (or at least provided the dirt to grow for) IS, etc.

[joe_the_user]

It's clearly possible to be against jumping to conclusions with crowd sourced material and also being false claims by the government (especially given that in the case of the Iraq invasion we don't how much fraud or bad faith really went into it).

Which is to say that measuring damage done by the Iraq invasion versus damage cause people falsely finger individuals for crimes is an exercise in fallacious analogy. The US isn't planning to crowd source their next invasion research question.

[kristopolous]

I bet a comparative study can be done. Some places have a history of vigilantes and lynch mobs and a banning of that practice for the authoritative form.

I wouldn't actually be surprised if people actively debated this and did some analytical legwork when they were prevalent as some twisted justification for the practice

[colechristensen]

It wasn’t over fake reports of nukes. The weapons reports were how it was justified for a while, it is quite doubtful that the war calculus relied on this for decision makers in any way more than as a coin to sell the war to the people.

[Razengan]

> It would be interesting to compare the damage caused by open, crowd-sourced investigative efforts against the damage caused of closed "authoritative" investigative efforts.

I hate that word “interesting” when used for things that are downright fucking despicable.

Human history is rife with witch hunts. Perpetrated by communities against people living on the fringe of society or anyone they just didn’t like. Someone to blame for nothing in particular when they can’t find any other outlet for frustration. I guarantee you wouldn’t find it “interesting” if you were the target of oPeN cRoWdSoUrCeD iNvEsTiGaTiVe EfFoRtS.

[emteycz]

And you wouldn't like being the target of a governmental agency either. The question is which is worse and in what ways.

[andy_ppp]

I thought there was some convincing evidence of nuclear centrifuges being buried in the head scientists back garden by his genocidal sons?

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

I mean I quite like this summation by Christopher Hitchens about the Iraq war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABqrEiuP0I

[wrycoder]

Read “The Bomb in my Garden” by Obeidi. As I recollect, he buried the plans for a centrifuge and some key parts.

[acqq]

If I read this correctly Obeidi hid that parts from Saddam, not for him, from the article above:

“Had the secret cache been discovered by Saddam’s security elements, Obeidi and his family might have been eliminated.”

And those were the leftovers from dismantling the stuff which was used before 1991, as far as I understand: definitely not a smoking gun, more the old rusty non-functional parts which Saddam didn’t know existed.

[ACow_Adonis]

As an analyst, something in me twitches involuntarily at your response. By people like this you mean redditors doing internet sleuthing?

But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers.

The evidence they use can be anything from high quality to low/ fraudulent.

And then we have the fact that the alternative official systems also have incentives/disincentives and also get things wrong: imagine writing about police or courts "they once fingered the wrong person for crime X, so don't put too much stock in it when it really matters".

if the Wikipedia article is anything to go by, the Boston bombing case was a bunch of internet people reacting on a rumour of similarity to descriptors/ images released by the authorities.

whereas in this case, a smart fellow follows a systematic and logical system to come to a reasonable conclusion.

I'd rather tell people to learn to judge evidence and the analytical thought that goes into making the conclusions.

Of course, we mustn't entirely discount the possibility that all this is just some PR stunt and this guy is in on it :p But either way, I'd say the better message is to learn to be skeptical, think analytically, and judge things on the quality of the evidence and the thought process used to come to the conclusion.

/soapbox

[dvtrn]

But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers.

Am I out of line to thinking that at least some of the types of people listed in your hypothetical group of sleuths have some sense of professional ethics to not recklessly speculate on a public web community in terms of a manhunt as was the case in Boston?

[ufmace]

They probably do. Unfortunately, the mechanics of Reddit favor any random dope posting something that is exciting and sounds good over smart and careful people taking their time to make sure they get it right.

And of course, "Hey guys I've got it, this is totally it!!!" goes up much faster than "I found something that might be interesting, let's check it out, but I'm not sure yet, so don't anybody go off half-cocked".

[djmips]

LEeroy Jeeenkins.

[ACow_Adonis]

Answering in a short, simple, probabilistic sense: they probably wouldn't comment.

Answering as a more seasoned, cynical person professional sense: that's way too simplified. Processes and standards for police, judges, officials etc, differ all over the world, as do professional ethics and culture. In practice there are various incentives and norms and "professional wiggle room for professional ethics". The police often release images of suspected persons or specific evidence precisely because they want the public to connect the dots and report their suspicions, knowing full well it results in false positive reports (and often withholding additional evidence for release). A doctor might not be allowed to euthanase, but they can prescribe high amounts of pain killers. A prosecuter might not go post on reddit, but they might act through a sock puppet or leak through the media. A defence may do the same. Corporations hire consultants and PR firms to give the illusion of justification and action at a distance. A judge would probably not comment on reddit (if not just because of the professions technical illiteracy), but the conditions of their appointment, their staff, political alignments, social circles, tenure, and professional ethics etc are far from uniform and sterile. All of the above are liable to cognitive, emotional and systematic failings and biases in addition, as well as the failings of their education and background: on a personal anecdote, I find judges and lawyers notoriously bad at reasoning that requires math or probability. In my experience also, those in power frequently strategically leak, work through proxies and associations to avoid the image of going against professional standards and save reputation.

additionally, in adhering to professional ethics, we don't necessarily approach the truth (which is presumably our goal), as following systematic cultures and professional ethics can lead to bias: as I pointed out, these official systems frequently come to the wrong conclusions as well, and going against the norms of professional standards can be used to silence critics, shun whistle blowers, and protect the general institution.

All this comes back to my original point: don't just believe something because it's posted in reddit. But don't discount it as being inherently inferior either.

Be skeptical, but be a skeptic of reddit and officeholders. Think critically. Learn to think and the process of thinking: it's not just natural, it needs to be learned and practiced. Learn the biases and common mistakes. Observe the evidence and the process used to come to the conclusion, and then make a judgement.

[throwaway894345]

It's not very reasonable to assume that all amateurs lack professional ethics solely on the basis of the Boston manhunt incident (especially considering the different ethics associated with hunting for people and locating an artifact in the desert). It's worse to take that inference and impugn any particular amateur as the OP did when he likened the redditor who located the monolith with the redditors who misidentified the Boston Bomber.

[dahfizz]

>> It's all well and good as long as we remember not to put too much stock in it when it really matters.

> But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers.

I think you and GP agree. Reddit sleuthing is all good and fun but it should not be trusted at face value (or at all, really) when there are real people and real consequences on the line.

> I'd rather tell people to learn to judge evidence and the analytical thought that goes into making the conclusions.

Implied in this position is that you have to be skeptical of reddit sleuthing until you have a reason not to be. The problem is that people are _not_ skeptical of reddit sleuthing because there is a "We did it reddit!" attitude that the platform is super capable and should be believed by default. You and GP are both warning against that.

[kordlessagain]

> it was people like this that once fingered the wrong person

And it's people like you who try to judge them equivalent in public view, when they clearly aren't.

[darkerside]

It's fine if it matters. What isn't fine it's if it's unverifiable.

[m463]

Right, what if it was accepted as fact, but turns out the monolith was there for millennia and was only recently uncovered by a sandstorm?

[donpott]

I feel the same way about the people who do OSINT, which is featured in HN every now and then. A fascinating world, to be sure!

[anoncake]

Bear_Fucker, actually. I don't think # is even allowed in Reddit usernames.

[noxer]

Imagine if these people would investigate voter fraud. No mainstream media would ever report that ;P

[encom]

These kinds of people are investigating voter fraud.