How The FBI Should Have Aged Bin Laden In Photo

Bin Laden (left) the FBI's strange amalgamation (center) and Gaspar Llamazares (right)

On January 16. 2010, in a story this website broke first, the Judiciary Report wrote regarding the FBI's discredited aged Osama Bin Laden photo:

"The sensible, logical way to have gone about it is working with an actual photo of the real subject and adding greying to the hair and to the face, progressing it with wrinkles, slight jowls, a bit of crows feet, a mild wrinkling of the nose and things of that order, to create a projected image of what the person would look like as time passes. But the FBI took the loco approach - they cut and pasted pictures together, infusing the subject's image with that of other people, which is criminally negligent and reckless in law enforcement, as it will have the public looking for and trying to kill the wrong person. All the signs are there that a crazy person is running the FBI."

Today, IT photo expert and a professor at the University of Toronto, Parham Aarabi, confirmed what the Judiciary Report wrote two weeks ago, regarding what was truly the best way to age progress a photo of Osama Bin Laden. He stated, "The new way is to try to understand a person's face and see how that person would naturally age -- use physics and computer graphics in that sense to see realistically how my hairline and my skin will change as I get older."

A more accurate age progressed photo of Osama Bin Laden, released today by University of Toronto professor, Parham Aarabi

The photo set posted above shows the correct age progression technique, rather than the crazy one the FBI illegally employed, in committing copyright infringement and identity theft, in merging the photo of the most notorious terrorist in the world, with that of Spanish Member of Parliament, Gaspar Llamazares.

The FBI still does not grasp the offense they have caused, but imagine it this way. What if law enforcement in Spain decided to put out an age progressed photo of a terrorist responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people and used a photo of Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Patrick Leahy or even President Obama to create the hair, forehead, eyebrows, face shape and beard in the mock up, then disseminated it to millions all over the world. The White House and U.S. Congress would be outraged.

The FBI has declined to comment on the NextGov.com article containing the professor's commentary. Of course, they will think people are trying to show them up, but it is a matter of public safety. You cannot go around using innocent people's images for law enforcement mock-ups.

What's scary is people okayed the terrible FBI mock-up at said agency, the Department of Justice and the State Department, when one look should have told them that was not really Bin Laden in the photo.

If I'd worked in any of those government agencies and someone asked me to sign off on that crazy FBI photo amalgamation, I would not have under any circumstances and asked the person who brought it to me, "Either you hate me and want me to get fired or think I need glasses or both." My next question would have been, "No really, who is that in the photo?"

FBI aging technique led to bin Laden mug mixup, IT professor says

01/27/2010 - Modiface A software program's rendering of how Osama bin Laden would age in 15 years (center) and 30 years (right).

The FBI should have focused on the physical aging of the suspect's unique skin type during a recent computerized age progression of Osama bin Laden instead of simply combining facial features from other photographs, says an expert on face detection and image processing algorithms...

"If I was looking for hairlines, I would perhaps look for a photo of bin Laden," said Parham Aarabi, chief executive officer of face visualization firm Modiface and an associate professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Toronto. "I would have used as much of Osama's own photo as possible."...

Modiface generated an age-enhanced photo of bin Laden in five seconds using an automated, Web-based tool without any manual user intervention or editing, and without additional photos or illustrations, Aarabi said. Modiface last week made the tool available free to the public, hoping that the law enforcement community will experiment with it...

"About five to 10 years ago, the software that existed involved adding overlays -- or taking elements of a photo [of an older person] and adding it to a photo that they wanted to age," Aarabi said. "The new way is to try to understand a person's face and see how that person would naturally age -- use physics and computer graphics in that sense to see realistically how my hairline and my skin will change as I get older."...

FBI officials declined to comment on Aarabi's assessment of its computer imaging.

http://www.nextgov.com