When cameras are everywhere, a killer can adjust accordingly.
The masked killer who targeted UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City on Wednesday is, after more than 48 hours, still on the run. This is remarkable because he is the focus of a very public manhunt.
We know so much already: Videos of the murder have spread widely on social media; police have described physical evidence, including bullet casings and a dropped phone and water bottle that might have been the assassin’s, and released pictures of a “person of interest” from his stay at a Manhattan hostel. We just don’t know who he is. After an outdoor attack in one of the busiest and most intensively surveilled places in the world—where cameras operated by the New York City Police Department and countless property owners are ubiquitous, supplemented by the personal devices that residents and visitors carry—the attacker has vanished, at least for the time being.
The gunman has succeeded in avoiding identification in part by understanding how technology is used and what its limits are. This killing raises the possibility that our surveillance network—an intricate web meant to enhance public safety and private security—has become so obvious and intrusive that criminal perpetrators can figure out how to dodge it.
