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Interpol Unscrambles Doctored Photo In Manhunt
jackpot777 writes in with an AP story out of Paris reporting that Interpol has distributed photos of a man suspected of sexually exploiting children. The images were recovered from pictures taken off the Internet in which the man's face had been blurred using something like Photoshop's Filter > Distort > Twirl tool. German police were able to recover recognizable images of the man, whose identity and nationality are not known. Interpol would not discuss the techniques used to recover the images. jackpot777 writes: "It does show one interesting facet of internet privacy that has also been noted with topics ranging from reading blurred check numbers in images to Google's plan to blur out license plate and face data for Street View. And that is: blurring is not the same as completely obscuring. As computers become more adept at extrapolating data of different types, your identity isn't safe unless you completely cover all those identifying features."
Amazing, indeed
My 0.02 cents
As computers become more adept at extrapolating data of different types, your identity isn't safe unless you completely cover all those identifying features.
Yes, or you could just stop molesting children and photographing it.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Surely the most effective filter would be a GIMP mask?
Ummm, about your sig. In this context? You're not him, are you?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"As computers become more adept at extrapolating data of different types, your identity isn't safe unless you completely cover all those identifying features.""
New laws were passed today, making it a felony to obscure, obfuscate, scramble, cover or otherwise purposely mask your identity by modifying a digital image for the purpose of avoiding identification by law enforcement agencies.
you're not going to be able to just take any heavily non-motion blurred image and get a supersharp result back.
Clearly you need to watch more episodes of CSI ^_^
I wonder when I'll be able to buy the software that automatically unscrambles all the pixelated regions on my rather specific-content Japanese DVDs.
Amazing! I tried it too. Did the twirl thing as far as it would go then used "undo" to reverse it and you really could not spot any difference AT ALL!
Or do it in hardware instead: Black bar glasses.
Oh wait, this isn't about Doctor Who... never mind.
Chiefbutz, you are a madman.When you stole that cow, and your friends tried to make it with the cow. I want to party with you, cowboy.
(Yeah, yeah, OT *grin*)
Bark less. Wag more.
if you are from a government, remove the data from an image with the alpha channel and don't uncheck "save color values from transparent pixels" (in gimp).
Rich
Am I the only one disappointed to find out that this doesn't have anything to do with the Rockstar game?
If this were an episode of CSI They could have simply drag-and-dropped the photo into their "automatically un-distort face in image" program, then zoomed in over the man's shoulder to read the artist's signature of a painting behind him. Then recognizing that these paintings are only sold from one obscure store in New York City, they drag-and-drop the photo into their "compare to every frame of every NYC ATM to this picture" program and found a frame of him standing conveniently in front of his license plate, which they could also zoom in to read the registration sticker text.
Get with the times Interpol. Sheesh, CSI wouldn't even have had to use their "match a partial fingerprint I zoomed in 6000% to get off of a glass of water in a 72dpi jpeg to every known felon in the US in under 10 seconds during witty banter" program to solve this one!
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
"Interpol Unscrambles Doctored Photo In Manhunt"
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"Interpol Microwaves Weird Ed's Hamster in Maniac Mansion"
Who says he's dumb? If he carefully photoshopped someone else's face onto his, and then applied the easy-to-remove swirl, he now has the entire planet searching for the wrong guy....
Edit >> Undo
It's easier to just draw black boxes over it then save as XCF (since if you try to save in another format it warns you about "flattening" the image, whatever that means)
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Luckily for them the moron didn't superimpose a goatse image over his face before doing the twirl.
Show us pictures of your wife!
P.S. Wow, this comment is on-topic for once!
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Thoughts on why they want to keep the technique secret:
"Woah, we caught a break, sir. That pedophile just used a twirl filter."
"No kidding? Did you get his face out of th..."
"Already done. Hopefully more of those assholes will use that twirl filter."
"Yeah, good point. Keep it quiet. I'll make up some story about secret techniques and taking six months."
"Oh, sir, one more thing. We really should get a legitimate copy of Photoshop."
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.