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

It's tinfoil time!

[mythosaz]

There's been a lot of 1984-esque technology stories of late, each of which has been tied to catching a child predator.

The tinfoil crowd sees this as how "the man" intends to deliver all of these intrusions to us -- by showing how they stop kid touchers.

Me? Meh. Neat that we're cross-referencing FBI wanted posters against passports. Seems a good use of the technology -- better than tagging people on Facebook automatically, I guess.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[Kenja]

I would think such systems would automatically flag people in tinfoil protector beanies for closer scrutiny...

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[93 Escort Wagon]

What we really need - but will never have - is some sort of independent civilian oversight group designed to make sure these sorts of programs operate within some specific narrow parameters - with effective enforcement power.

Looking for passport fraud? Go ahead and look through all the passport pictures... as long as you immediately discard every single one that doesn't match.

Looking for a stolen car? Go ahead and use that vehicle-mounted license plate scanner... But you can't store any of the non-matching plates for even a second.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[mythosaz]

Cross-checking the FBI wanted list against passport photos (or driver's license photos for that matter) doesn't disgust me.

To each their own.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[Ralph Wiggam]

What we really need - but will never have - is some sort of independent civilian oversight group designed to make sure these sorts of programs operate within some specific narrow parameters

That's what the Judicial Branch is supposed to do. We don't need an entirely new structure. We just need better execution from them.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[Jane Q. Public]

In this day and age, you almost have to have a driver's license. How is it fair that they make you get one, and then they use privacy-violating facial recognition software on it? They shouldn't be allowed to use this information as they please. They should need a specific warrant to even look at it, and I don't think all these government organizations should be sharing information. Freedom and privacy are simply more important than safety.

doesn't disgust me.

Because you're anti-freedom. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, the very same fruits that have grown time and time again throughout history.

Too bad it's an AC comment. I agree 100%.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[KhabaLox]

Look for it yourself.

By this, I assume you mean have a human police officer use biological eyes to scan streets and parking lots for a stolen car or it's license plate number. This is a very expensive and inefficient way to solve the problem.

There are a lot of problems that are best solved by government entities. Like any business, the government should strive to solve these problems as efficiently as possible. The issue is that a lot of the process or technological improvements that we can put in place (like license plate scanners) reduce price so dramatically that the net can be cast much wider. Instead of looking just for cars that are involved in a kidnapping, we can look for cars that are involved in any crime. With this increased productivity comes the real risk of overreach on the part of government.

Your proposed solution seems to be to not allow government to have access to these cost saving improvements. That's impractical, as well as a bad decision from a financial perspective. Rather, we should, as GPP points out, have rigid oversight mechanisms, checks and balances if you will, to insure that government doesn't overstep it's bounds.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[rmdingler]

I know of several people who were dismissed as tinfoil hatters prior to the Snowden revelations.

just saying.

Facial recognition programs on 300 and umpteen million folks(Your Metrics May Vary), to rightfully monitor 10,000 with legitimate probable cause? I'd rather be free than that safe.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[redeIm]

This is a very expensive and inefficient way to solve the problem.

Yes. That is the point. All of this automated surveillance has gotten out of control, and allows the government to oppress people more efficiently than ever before. That is not a good thing; sometimes the government should not be inexpensive or effective.

The oversight never does any good, will be subverted eventually, and doesn't solve the fundamental problem: The data on innocents should not be collected to begin with.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[mythosaz]

Police, I suppose should wander the streets with blindfolds on, only removing them if they get within 20 yards of an out-of-bounds ankle bracelet or a ringing alarm. :/

If you add "automation' to existing processes, freedom isn't necessarily lost.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[crioca]

I think using this technology in this context is a net negative as it's eventually going to be used against activists, whistle blowers and other individuals that are insufficiently patriotic, not to mention the potential for abuse and hacking.

Does that make me a tinfoil hat wearer?

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[sonamchauhan]

Correct - lets hamstring the police. Information technology, image recognition, automation, are only permissible for use by mobsters, etc.

*Private* data should not be accessible without a warrant. Image recognition on data already presented to the government (a passport photo in this case) is perfectly permissible.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[c6gunner]

I know of several people who were dismissed as tinfoil hatters prior to the Snowden revelations.

I strongly suspect that those people can still be safely dismissed as tinfoil hat wearers. When you spit out a hundred different conspiracy theories every day, one of them is bound to be right eventually. That's the magic of probability and large numbers.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[c6gunner]

All of this automated surveillance has gotten out of control, and allows the government to oppress people more efficiently than ever before.

Kinda funny, then, that bankrupt regimes with 1980s era electronics are orders of magnitude better at this "oppression" thing than our own high-tech governments.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[ArmoredDragon]

Most of the ones who were dismissed as such probably still are. Usually those types of people listen to Alex Jones. And you know what? They're still equally nutty and in some cases downright silly. Examples of such silliness: They believe IPv6 is a Cisco plot in tandem with the Illuminati and/or the NWO to take over the world. Yeah you read that right; and you can't make this shit up:

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/...

Here's an actual quote from the website:

As I said in an earlier post, I like how hardcore and bold the NWO is. A teeny fraction of the world's internet users use IPv6, and Cisco and the other globalist cyber false-flagger corporations believe all of the world's sheeple will just ease into the new global cattle pen with no resistance.

IPv6 must be resisted.

I like how these guys use a bunch of tiny truths to point to one big "TRUTH!" that is really a horribly retarded conclusion. Any IP engineer will easily point out however why their little "TRUFES!" don't point to what they think it does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[AmiMoJo]

There are a limited number of police officers, and they are human beings so at least in theory can't easily be ordered to break the law or do unethical things. An automated face recognition system can be cheaply deployed almost everywhere, and can be used for nefarious purposes simply by adding the faces of a few people the authorities don't like to the list of suspects. "Sorry, false positive" is going to become a new way to harass innocent people that those with authority don't like.

The system will also be abused for data collection, if it isn't already. Used to be that they only had a record of people actually going through the border checkpoints, but now they can just sprinkle cameras around the general area and see who accompanied them. Cops can't identify everyone they see, but a computer can. Even if it doesn't have a name, it can create a record and spot when the same person visits another place with facial recognition. The NSA already scans the internet for public photos to build a database of known faces.

Privacy and freedom are most definitely lost.

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.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[Shortguy881]

Hmm let me try:

People are listening to all our internet traffic - Cisco router back doors
All our online searches and emails are filtered for "illegal content" - Google turns over suspicious emails to government officials
Our cell phones record all our conversations - all cell companies have huge data stores of every phone call made for at least the last decade
Toll cameras track our movements by license plate - Shown to be true via the state of new york
Our cell phones are used to track our location - Federal government has put out several notices to local law enforcement to deny such claims
Facebook turns over all personal data to law enforcement - These reports are just scarily detailed
Our cars monitor our movements - onstar
The government is building a huge database of potential troublemakers, "terrorists," and including all their friends and relatives on that same list by association - NSA
Facial recognition is monitoring our every movement through controlled areas - see this article

I must be f*ing nuts

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[alexo]

Our government doesn't yet have enough political power to safely brutalize its general population (though it's doing an increasingly good job on minorities), but it can control most of us never-the-less.

Your government doesn't need to brutalize its general population in order to control it.
And, as you have noted yourself, it does resort to brutalizing when dealing with less compliant groups.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[c6gunner]

The US government has it's citizens barely able to control their bowels due to unfounded fear of terrorism.

Complete fucking nonsense. The average American is more afraid of vaccines than they are of terrorists.

Dissidents are corralled into "free speech zones" or simply ignored.

Only in the mind of a delusional sociopath is being ignored the same as being oppressed. And what kind of egomaniac do you have to be in order to believe that you have a right to other peoples attention?

The government actively monitors and attempts to disrupt dissent online via operations against sites such as Slashdot.

Also, your tinfoil hat seems to be leaking.

There are secret courts designed to prevent proper oversight and scrutiny.

So secret that you and your cat were able to find loads of evidence which you would happily share with others if only the MIBs hadn't stolen it from you!

There is little difference between the two main parties, and the people with the real power don't change even when they do. Americans have very little real democratic influence.

Yeah, very little difference. I mean, both parties are human. And they firmly obey the laws of physics. And no matter how many Americans would like to repeal the law of gravity, it never seems to happen. OPPRESSION!

The US has outdone all those oppressive regimes and most of its citizens don't even realize what has happened.

Only a ignorant child who's never stepped foot outside the western sphere could EVER make such an absurd claim. You have absolutely no idea what real oppression and control are. You're so completely obsessed with your own petty grievances that you can't even be bothered to try and understand the plight of people who's entire lifetimes are spent in absolute terror of saying the wrong thing, or being perceived to be anything short of completely dedicated to the wishes of the state. You have no idea how disgusting your words truly are.

Re:It's tinfoil time!

[c6gunner]

But, there were many who read Orwell and were convinced government would eventually devolve to this.

Yeah; the dumb kids sitting at the back of the class eating their crayons, who didn't realize Orwell was referring to communist regimes which already existed at the time. In other words, the same idiots who make up the majority of the various Conspiracy Theory movements today.

"The FBI has been developing"..

[fred911]

Definition: they've been using it for 5 years.

Re:"The FBI has been developing"..

[gweihir]

Indeed. And now they are ready to break it to the public and have searched for a nice, repulsive individual for a few months, ignoring countless others where the public might have noticed how bad the technology actually is for individual freedom.

Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mother's basement... Just never go out and never let your picture be taken..

Re:Where?

[Runaway1956]

Apparently, you don't understand the term "political asylum".

Re:Where?

[Obfuscant]

Forgive the troll feeding, if that's the case. Snowden was convicted of what?

The same thing this guy who is being extradited from Nepal was. Nothing yet. He jumped bail, which can only happen prior to trial.

What I'm wondering about in this story, if the passport was FAKE, how did the FBI have a copy of the passport PHOTO that wasn't sent to the department of state to scan against the mug shot they did have? Was the passport REAL but under an assumed name, or was it really fake and not issued by the state department and they got the picture by magic?

Re:Where?

[rmdingler]

When an American citizen seeks political asylum in Russia,

well,

it's time to take a good look at ourselves.

Re:Where?

[gweihir]

The idea of a police-state is that you cannot hide. Sure, for really bad crimes, it is fine for the state to throw a lot of resources at it, bit what they did here is cheap and can be applied universally. That the index case seems to be somebody carefully selected so that nobody has any sympathy is just a propaganda trick. I bet they had at the very least several hundred hits.

And if you think a police-state is not so bad, after all it just mercilessly enforces the rule of law, here is news for you: 1. "The law" and morality, ethics and what is right are two different things. For example, the killing of the Jews in the 3rd Reich was legal. 2. A police state is universally followed by totalitarianism, because at some point all opposition can be silenced legally.

Re:Where?

[gnasher719]

Read Three Felonies a Day (http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx), then apply this type of technology.

That has been totally debunked. The author claims that the average person commits three felonies on an average day. The examples that he gives are things that very few people do once in their life. So iff you are in the USA, you are not going to commit three felonies today. There is a small chance that you commit _one_ at some point in your life, but that chance is small.

Re:Where?

[Obfuscant]

The word fake is not in the article.

Third paragraph, third sentence of the article:

Street performer Neil Stammer travelled to Nepal eight years ago using a fake passport under the name Kevin Hodges.

Yes, because at the time the scanning was done the FBI in fact did not have the photo. After the State department found the match against the publicly available wanted criminal information

It doesn't matter WHO had the picture. State department, FBI, whatever. Since the passport was fake, and clearly said so in the article as well as the summary, the state department wouldn't have the picture. You do not send your picture to the state department when you get a fake passport, you give it to the guy who makes the fakes. And he doesn't give it to the government.

How did they (whoever) get his picture to scan against his wanted photo?

and thus is perfectly reasonable for the FBI to obtain from the State Department after that.

I didn't ask if it was reasonable for the FBI to get the picture, I asked HOW they got it. And for that, you have no answer.

We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[Anonymous Coward]

Scanning travel documents for hits in criminal (or other databases) is yet another case of data being re-purposed for uses other than the original intent. It is the same problem I have with things like Visa selling lists of what people pay for using a Visa card, Verizon selling a list of what addresses I travel to and what websites I browse and my pharmacy selling my prescription information.
 
Repurposing of data for unrelated uses is deeply corrosive to the trust that society needs to function. It keeps us all metaphorically looking over our shoulders, wondering in the back of our heads just how this information generated by going about our normal every-day lives might end up harming us. Even if one in a million times it helps catch a pedo, that still doesn't justify the damage it does to a free society.
 
There will always be crime, even in the most authoritarian of countries. But copious amounts of dignity and privacy are necessary for a healthy society - when you constantly have to second guess yourself it makes you less willing to be open and honest with others, makes you less willing to take risks, to be unconventional. Just compare the amount of creative development in the west to that of the USSR in the same time frame, or even North Korea now. Every time a database is repurposed, our society gets a little bit less robust.

Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[jklovanc]

I don't think using facial recognition to verify the identity of someone using a US passport is re purposing data.

Even if one in a million times it helps catch a pedo, that still doesn't justify the damage it does to a free society.

How will these identity verifications damage a free society? The will definitely impact passport fraud.

Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[davidwr]

The only valid reason for a passport photo is to make sure that one person doesn't have two passports.

That, and to make sure the passport is really the person who claims it is his.

OK, I will grant you this: You can dispense with the photo altogether for "yes, this passport is mine" purposes if there is another practically-un-spoofable method for the purported passport holder to prove that it is his. A hash of DNA/fingerprint/iris/etc. will do. Possession of knowledge, such as a decryption key of encyphered text embedded in the passport that says "yes, it's really me" will be good enough for most purposes but it's not as good as a unique biometric identifier.

Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[redeIm]

Abuses of facial recognition is a problem in and of itself.

Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[Anonymous Coward]

> That, and to make sure the passport is really the person who claims it is his.
> You can dispense with the photo altogether for "yes, this passport is mine" purposes if there is another practically-un-spoofable

For over a century we've had passports without such unspoofable methods and without significant problems. Just because the technology is now there to cross-check photos does not mean we must do it. Do not fall victim to the authoritarianism of technocracy.

BTW, when you get a passport you provide the photo. You can tweak it such that the facial recog algos fail but humans still recognize you. We are far away from an unspoofable system.

Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[redeIm]

Sorry but everyone on earth is a potential criminal. I don't care how many times my finger prints (they were taken for a background check) are compared because I have never committed a serious crime (I have a few speeding tickets).

Agreed. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. History confirms this.

Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[jklovanc]

What is or is not abuse is an opinion and therefore variable. Too many people seem to think that "use" is the same as "abuse".

Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[jklovanc]

Conversely, if you have not been proven to be a criminal no one should suspect you. Reality is somewhere between those two extremes.

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:We Are All Under Suspicion Now

[radarskiy]

Note that the FBI is not scanning the set of passport photos for hits in a criminal database. In fact, in this case the FBI is not doing any scanning at all.

In this case, the State Department was scanning passport photos for hits in publicly available identity information, since passports are identity information and are expected to correctly match your identity. It just so happens that the State Department found a hit against a differen identity that was also that of a wanted criminal and that the identities really were for a single person.

This Juggler's Only Crime

[Anonymous Coward]

Was for juggling balls before they dropped

Re:This Juggler's Only Crime

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such a tight-ass. I suppose we shouldn't make any jokes about death, divorce, marriage, or any of the other things that happen in life because there are real people that really suffered from it.

Re:This Juggler's Only Crime

[Wraithlyn]

Oh lighten the fuck up, we are laughing at some clever wordplay, not because we think child abuse is funny.

Plot Twist

[PRMan]

Plot Twist: Kevin Hodges isn't the guy. He just looks like him. Oh well, he's going to prison for life for looking like a child predator. (Hopefully there are safeguards against this.)

Re:What is this be 'magic shop'?

[Runaway1956]

No spells, I don't think. What we refer to as "magic" here in the US is simply sleight-of-hand. I've never visited a "magic shop", but I would expect to find top hats with secret compartments, costumes, literal smoke and mirrors, special decks of cards, loaded dice, the boxes and saws used to "saw people in half". There would probably be books detailing how to make these tricks work. Such books would emphasize the importance of distracting the audience' attention away from the trickery, toward something else, such as a beautiful, scantily clad young lady.

For spells, you would probably visit a book shop that specializes in occult writings.

Frustrated

[The Raven]

What frustrates and upsets me is that before Snowden, I would have looked at this as a fluff piece about technology, with some mild nagging doubts about how it could be misused.

Now I see them as NSA whitewashing propaganda, with mild nagging doubts that maybe the original poster had no agenda and it really is a tech fluff article.

Psycho-Pass

[ArcadeMan]

Are we on the path to a world were even our state of mind will be on trial?

Re:Woosh

[redeIm]

Fundamental freedoms are simply more important than safety. I would rather let many criminals get away than allow these privacy invasions to continue.

Whenever it's advertized like this, then it is bad

[gweihir]

If they trot out the child abusers (usually carefully selected so that nobody has any sympathy), what is actually announced is really bad for individual freedoms. Expect this to be used against you on a traffic ticket in 5-10 years or to identify people participating in lawful demonstrations. That is a sure way to a police-state and that one is universally followed by totalitarianism some time later.

Dont you mean alledged?

[Osgeld]

Now I dont know the whole story, or frankly any of it, but if he was not tried he is not convicted

but who cares big brother caught a pedo, rejoice and go to sleep!