Operation ViCo: InterPol hunts for Gay Pedophile
 

Interpol is making a public worldwide request for assistance in identifying a man photographed sexually abusing children in a series of images posted on the Internet, the first time the organization has made such an appeal.

Although the original photographs had been digitally altered by him or his accomplices to disguise his face, specialists from the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) in Germany working with INTERPOL’s Trafficking in Human Beings unit have been able to produce an identifiable picture.

From this
http://www.interpol.int/Public/THB/vico/2Gmask.jpg

To this:
http://www.interpol.int/Public/THB/vico/2G.jpg

Read Wired article

So much for swirl blurs eh?

I disagree with the following statement:

But the decision to unmask him is not without risk: Tipping criminals off to the techniques that police have at their disposal could also prompt them to better hide their identities.

Please. Such a method already exists. It's called blacking out the photo. Can't reconstruct what's not already there. Ah well, the naivete :)

What a dumbass. He must have wanted people to see his face if he used such a primitive filter. Either that or he wanted to be the criminal with a twist and thought a black box over the face was too plain and generic.

You know, I bet when he first did that on photoshop or whatever, he must have thought himself pretty clever. On an unrelated noted, this reminds of that recent episode of south park where

The vanity of some criminals is amazing. One would think that he'd just want to be hidden. But that would be logical thinking

'vanity' really isn't the right term for pedophiles who are driven to make their own pornography.

Anyway, the risk that criminals who would use the blur filter will now otherwise crop photos is there, it's just mitigated by many many years of people cropping photos or applying black censor bars or what have you.

I hope they find this asshole and string him up.

If they were thinking logically to begin with, they wouldn't take the enormous risk of abusing children. It's always going to put a person in danger of being caught, and there's not really a whole lot they can do about it. The child themself always knows who did it, and most likely where to find 'em.

Logical thinking went out the window as soon as they became an active pederast.

That was my point, actually.

Regarding the swirl blur: I know very little about that technology but would it have been significantly safer for the criminal to have used several swirls overlapping the previous swirls? (I don't know if I worded that clearly enough, but I don't know how to say it in a clear way.)

Obviously, it's not as effective as blacking out the photo, but would it have helped or would it have only taken more time to undo?