The Technology of Surveillance.

David Henneberry

One of the most popular memes coming out of the bombing of the Boston Marathon has been the way technology has helped. Story after story has been posted and published detailing the ways in which technology has made it easier to nab the bombers. A lot of this goes toward justifying the spiraling costs of our Big Brother government post 9/11 Security State that wants to keep tabs on us at all times--for our own good, of course. Perhaps the most ridiculous story to surface, however, has been the notion that Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) was instrumental in finding the second suspect, Dzokhar Tsarnaev.

Gizmodo's recent story is a great example of this. But perhaps the best one is their most recent story titled: The Crazy Accurate Thermal Images that Saw Dzokhar Tsarnaev Through a Boat Tarp. We're all supposed to be amazed and delighted that security forces have such amazing technology. More importantly, however, we're supposed to believe that this technology is somehow responsible for nabbing the latest incarnation of evil.

The fact of the matter is this technology had nothing to do with finding the suspect. The man who owned the boat, David Henneberry, was out having a smoke when he noticed something amiss with his tarp. When he went over to inspect it he saw the bloody body of Dzokhar Tsarnaev. You can read the full story here. But there was no major technolgy deployed or used to find this kid.

 

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