

Ask HN: Cons of open sourcing MH370 investigation data? - ben-gy

I&#x27;m curious to discover your opinions on why the Malaysian authorities haven&#x27;t open sourced the investigation data for missing flight MH370.<p>I&#x27;m certain that many benefits from OS development would carry through to equivalent investigations, especially through harnessing the collective problem solving abilities of communities like HN.<p>What do you think the opposing factors are?
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_delirium
> I'm certain that many benefits from OS development would carry through to
> equivalent investigations, especially through harnessing the collective
> problem solving abilities of communities like HN.

Given the recent high-profile incident where internet crowdsourcing converged
on identifying two innocent people as responsible for the Boston Marathon
bombing, and then attempted to spread their personal information as widely as
possible, I don't think this approach currently has a good reputation.

I think it's an interesting question what crowdsourcing works well and poorly
for. But I'd put criminal investigations way down the list of good candidates,
due to the danger of devolving into mob justice, and even raising the risk of
innocent people being lynched.

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dandelany
There are a couple of potential concerns of national security which explain
Malaysian officials being cagey about the radar "blip" which (presumably)
turned out to be MH370:

1\. The exact locations and ranges of military radar capabilities is
considered secret, if other countries knew their exact locations/abilities it
would make an attack easier. This would make them reluctant to say where they
picked it up/lost it on radar as it could reveal the range of the radar.

2\. If the radar blip wasn't MH370, what was it? It could have been a drone
from any number of countries, or a spy plane flying over, or any number of
potentially embarrassing possibilities that a military commander would have
trouble admitting had gone mostly unnoticed for 72 hours.

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krapp
Do you believe there is some necessary domain-specific expertise which the
Malaysian authorities don't already have access to?

They have "open sourced" it to the degree that they allow other governments
and their resources to be involved. But I don't understand what it would even
mean beyond that context.

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malandrew
Certainly, not only do large open datasets about tragedies that need to be
solved attract many curious minds, they tend to attract:

1) people with domain experience but in different specialties in that domain
that may prove to have a different viewpoint or hypothesis to explore or may
have access to technologies or useful knowledge that the current domain
experts the Mayalasian government has employed do not. 2) people without
domain expertise, but have a strong expertise in another field that could
offer novel strategies. These people are probably already autodidacts and
would just spending enough effort to learn about specific parts of the domain
that allow them to apply their knowledge.

Both have a lot to offer in addition too (not instead of) what Mayalasia's own
expert already are doing.

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dandrews
(I do not think open source means what you think it means.)

Some of the data may be products of military signal gathering, capabilities of
which those agencies would be loathe to disclose.

