Fugitive Child Sex Abuser Caught By Face-Recognition Technology

mrspoonsi sends this BBC report: "A U.S. juggler facing child sex abuse charges, who jumped bail 14 years ago, has been arrested in Nepal after the use of facial-recognition technology. Street performer Neil Stammer traveled to Nepal eight years ago using a fake passport under the name Kevin Hodges. New facial-recognition software matched his passport picture with a wanted poster the FBI released in January. Mr Stammer, who had owned a magic shop in New Mexico, has now been returned to the U.S. state to face trial. The Diplomatic Security Service, which protects U.S. embassies and checks the validity of U.S. visas and passports, had been using FBI wanted posters to test the facial-recognition software, designed to uncover passport fraud. The FBI has been developing its own facial-recognition database as part of the bureau's Next Generation Identification program."

Comments

Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't hide in Nepal, where can you hide?

Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[Algae_94]

The government already owns the database of passport photos. It's theirs. Every person who has a photo in there gave it to the government. In this case the FBI did a cross reference between 2 databases owned by the government. They did not force or coerce any private entity or individual to divulge private information to them. They weren't using any sort of real time or recent time surveillance. I don't see how you can make any rational suggestion to stop this situation short of abolishing passport photos and the subsequent database of them.

You may not like it. You may think this is another step on the slippery slope, but what specific part of this do you recommend be changed?

Should the government not be allowed to look at their own data? Do you think government agencies should not be able to share data? Do you think passports should not require photos? If you can come up with a way to stop this you can work on changing things. Otherwise, you're just whining about things.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[rmdingler]

Or:

Some of these people were being improperly classified as conspiracy theorists.

I am aware there are some who see conspiracy at every turn, as if no event on the radar could simply be happenstance. Shit does just happen, sometimes.

But, there were many who read Orwell and were convinced government would eventually devolve to this. Whatever they used to be called, it can now be said they appear prophetic.