Freedom, Privacy, and Boston

We've lost a lot of our privacy with instant dissemination of the terror.

From Nicole Gelinas, at City Journal:

Much has been made, since the Boston Marathon bombings, of how social media have transformed policing and counterterror techniques. A less-remarked aspect of social networks is the way they have changed how individuals respond to disasters, whether man-made or natural. In particular, some who think nothing of snapping and instantly posting photos of themselves around the clock also have no compunction about snapping and instantly posting photos of the view outside their office windows or across the street during an attack or disaster. What they’re viewing and enabling others to view may be not only gruesome but also intensely personal—images of people gravely wounded or dying. Do people have the right to endure their suffering in private?

A decade ago, this problem didn’t exist. On September 11, digital cameras were still new, and uploading photos was cumbersome. Today, of course, everybody has a digital camera embedded in his phone, and it takes just seconds to send pictures around the world. Minutes after the Boston bombing, before cable news and newspapers had begun reporting it and before emergency responders had “cleared the scene,” as the euphemism goes, social-media users were already redistributing graphic photos of blood-soaked sidewalks still populated by victims with horrific injuries...

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