Is crowd-sourcing the future of counter-terrorism?

Crowd-sourcing is an operation that utilises mass behaviour to get things done. The most high profile charity example is probably Cancer Research UK’s Cell Slider project.

At the moment, cancer samples are given special stains that highlight certain molecules as part of research. These molecules could reveal how a patient will respond to treatment. Thousands of CRUK supporters have logged on to help assess photographs of these samples.

Using this form of crowd-sourced research, CRUK have saved a huge amount of money and time. It is also likely that the work done will lead to lives being saved in the future.

Thus, into this new and exciting arena step internet forums 4Chan and reddit. After the appalling Boston bombings, users decided to apply the same model in order to identify the terrorists.

These sites are essentially discussion forums. reddit, which calls itself ‘The front page of the internet’, is a global platform for dialogue on just about any topic you could imagine (and some you couldn’t). Members - or ‘redditors’ - discuss news stories in real-time, and like Twitter, this can be a vital resource for journos and researchers trying to gauge the public mood immediately after a major news story.

If unqualified, unaccountable opinion is your bag, then I encourage you to visit more online forums!

But the Boston example is unprecedented insofar as the bomber was almost certainly caught on camera. The explosions occurred during a global media event watched by millions, on dozens of different networks.

Additionally, a substantial proportion of the photos of the marathon taken by individuals are now online, on channels such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Little wonder, then, that the CRUK model was rolled out so quickly. A discussion feed entitled ‘r/FindBostonBombers’ was set up, and photos were posted with redditors quickly identifying people who were Arabic looking and carrying a rucksack.

What started as a philanthropic exercise quickly degenerated into a game of racist Where’s Wally? highlighting the limitations of crowd-sourcing in this context, and throwing the focus on two completely unconnected Moroccan-Americans - one of whom said he is scared to go outside after he was portrayed on the on the front page of a newspaper.

But while this example is racially problematic, it is actually the flip-side of a coin tossed in North Africa, with the Arab Spring.

In Tunisia, Egypt and the others, social media such as Twitter and Facebook were used to co-ordinate otherwise disorganised revolutionary gangs. The result was regime-toppling change that was, essentially, crowd-sourced. Of course, in many ways all revolutions are crowd-sourced, but the new technology precipitated an unprecedented speed in action, and once again - it could be argued - saved lives.

So is the reddit/4Chan example good citizenship or irresponsible meddling?

I have a sneaking suspicion that once a terrorist attack occurs, the Left secretly hope it was a Rightwing nutter whilst the Right hope it was an Arab fundamentalist like 9/11.

But the first conversation that happened when I came into the office that day was ‘Who had done it’, and I’ve a feeling the same thing went on in workplaces all around the Western world. Crowd-sourced counter-terrorism is a brilliant concept that could be aborted because of ill-informed racial profiling.

The speed of 24 hour news demands immediate results and where there is a vacuum, the internet blabbermouth will surely step in. Let’s not allow them to poison the drinking well, nor take their opinions as anything more than that. Let’s not over-react, essentially.