“Interpol sought public help Monday in identifying a suspected pedophile, revealing a technique to unscramble digitally altered images to show the face of a man seen in Internet photos sexually abusing young boys in Vietnam and Cambodia. Specialists succeeded in producing identifiable images of the man from the original pictures, where his face was a digitally blurred whirl… Anders Persson, a Swedish police officer who oversees Interpol’s database of images of child abuse, said releasing the photos sent ‘a quite clear message’ to criminals that they can be identified through Web postings. He declined to detail how specialists unblurred the photos… ‘For years, images of this man sexually abusing children have been circulating on the Internet. We have tried all other means to identify and to bring him to justice, but we are now convinced that without the public’s help this sexual predator could continue to rape and sexually abuse young children whose ages appear to range from six to early teens,’ Interpol’s secretary general, Ronald K. Noble, said in a statement.” — MSNBC (US)

(Thanks to bgta for the link.)

You can view one of the original blurred photos and four un-blurred ones on the official site of Interpol. The international police organization also released a statement about its efforts to apprehend this pedophile.

You know how that Dummies series of books with titles such as Mutual Funds for Dummies and Javascript for Dummies? It looks like it’s about time for some enterprising author to start penning similar tomes for sex tourists. Plainly this man being sought by Interpol needed Photoshop for Pedos. The chapter on filters and effects would clarify the important distinction between analog and digital. Analog: if you take a wet painting and swirl a finger through it, you will have created a random and probably irreversible change in the painting. Digital: if you take a snapshot and swirl it with a filter, you will have performed an algorithmic transformation on it. An algorithm is basically a calculation and therefore its results are, in principle, reversible. For this reason, blurring your face with a photo-editing program is not a reliable way of concealing your identity. Furthermore, be aware that sometimes digital photos contain metadata — associated information (such as a camera’s serial number) that can be used to trace the picture-taker. This happened not long ago when some reckless fan distributed pre-release snapshots of the new Harry Potter book.

Law enforcement sometimes complains about the technological sophistication of Information Age criminals. And it’s true that, in the case of some criminals, it is not a cliché to say that they’re cutting-edge. In fact, there is an interesting case to be made that illicit (if not criminal) enterprises are precisely the vanguard of technology. But plainly this Most Wanted sex tourist is not a member of this perv/geek elite. He’s just a guy with a digital camera, a laptop, and a lust for adolescent boys. He needs Photoshop for Pedos.

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