One unintended benefit of having cameras on so many devices and a way to share those with everybody instantaneously was that speed at which the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were ID’d. That’s one benefit of crowd sourcing.
On the back-end, police took the crowd out of the game by locking everyone down. I can certainly understand the safety concerns, but the trade-off, perhaps, was a longer time to apprehension as the owner of the boat where the “white cap suspect” was hiding said he may have discovered that sooner if he had not followed the lock down orders.
Our Dinner Table 
also on the back-end is having a military grade arsenal walking down your street pointing deadly objects at you:
http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/4547848/Peeking+through+blinds/
im not buying into any conspiracy theories about the actual bombing, but the follow-up ‘lockdown’ certainly made me uneasy.
Fortunately, it doesn’t happen that often.
im curious. would a citizen be within their rights to stand on their front lawn with a loaded weapon and refuse to allow them access to their private property without a warrant? seems reasonable, no? why does it also seem like it would get you shot dead?
I think in situations like this, most citizens would voluntarily allow them in. If it got to be a behavior that occurred every time a mouse scurried about, I think there would be a cause for concern. On the bright side, I think it says a lot that they were able to take the younger brother into custody w/o…ooops…killing him.