Stalker Found Victim's Home By Looking At Reflection In Her Pupil From High-Res Photo (boingboing.net) 99
JustAnotherOldGuy shares a report from Boing Boing, with the caption: "Enhance, zoom in... more... more... straight out of CSI." From the report: Last month a Japanese entertainer named Ena Matsuoka was attacked in front of her home in Tokyo. Her alleged attacker, an obsessed fan, was able to figure out where she lived by zooming in on a high resolution photo and identifying a bus stop reflected in her pupils. According to Asia One, the alleged attacker "even approximated the storey Matsuoka lived on based on the windows and the angle of the sunlight in her eyes."
Enhance 224 to 176 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm old-school, reminds me more of the photo analysis scene in Blade Runner.
BTW, This [cloudinary.com] is only 3 weeks away now.
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Same. The thing that bothered me at the time was the notion of looking around a corner, which is in theory impossible unless the photo is a composite of multiple POVs, which was pretty clearly established as not the case. I'd still take one order of bullshit science Blade Runner style over anything CSI, which combines bullshit science with *pointless* bullshit science(computer displays designed for professionals as exposition for stupid people).
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when i was young, i retconned this as the world being completely full of security cameras, but as a workaround to prevent constant surveillance, they only reported that data when triggered by a police camera, which would then poll the cameras and stitch together adjacent information into the photograph.
i thought it was a cool idea, but joke's on me of course; we went for constant surveillance and no one cares.
Re:Enhance 224 to 176 (Score:5, Interesting)
All photos are a composite of multiple POVs. The entire front surface of the lens is used to generate the photo, and each point on the lens surface has a slightly different POV. When the view of the different POVs from different areas of the lens conflict, you get blurring. When you focus the lens, you are selectively choosing a certain distance not to blur (the focal plane). But anything in the foreground or background relative to that plane will be blurred due [wikipedia.org] to the multiple POVs. That's why a big DSLR lens generates nice bokeh, while the tiny lens on your smartphone is nearly razor sharp at all distances and needs to be blurred in software.
In a traditional camera with film or a digital sensor, this blurring effect is permanent. (Sort of. If you know the lens' blurring characteristics, called a point spread function, it's possible to reverse the blurring computationally via a process called deconvolution [youtube.com], although it's a computationally expensive process.)
But in a light field camera [wikipedia.org], the light is recorded before this effect is made permanent. That's why with a you can select the focus point after taking the photo with a light field camera, and choose how much/how little to blur the foreground and background. Although not normally used in the manner shown in Blade Runner, you could in fact use a light field camera to "peek around a corner" to the extent that the edge of a lens could peek around the corner relative to the center of the lens. So it's not BS. Blade Runner was in fact correct in predicting that you'd be able to do that with photos in the future, though the effect looks a bit exaggerated compared to what you'd get with a regular DSLR lens.
The other part of photos in Blade Runner which seemed fanciful at the time was that they were briefly animated. But that's become trivial with modern digital cameras. We just haven't gotten to the point where a printout will also animate.
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That is about as pedantic as one can get.
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I'm old-school, reminds me more of the photo analysis scene in Blade Runner.
That movie (the original one) came out the month after I returned home after several years in Tokyo. To me at the time, it was a nostalgia movie.
What camera? (Score:2)
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Maybe the kind professionals use for publicity photos?
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See what can be recovered at 20, 36, 50, 102 megapixels...
Need a Fujifilm GFX 100?
Hasselblad X1D II 50C?
Nikon Z7?
Hasselblad X1D?
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What camera and lens can produce such detailed picture?
Pretty much any modern professional or advanced amateur camera. These are the cameras that have interchangeable lenses and are generally referred to as DSLR cameras (even though the term isn't technically correct for some of the mirrorless versions). The most popular ones are made by Cannon, Nikon, and Sony. The lenses on these cameras are like 50-80 millimeters across as compared to a cell phone camera where the lens is less than 10 millimeters across.
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I remember back in the early 2000s I saw an image of Tarja from Nightwish, at very high quality, and while zooming in you could see the shape of the photographer in her pupil reflection. Of course, it was just a very blurry shape but still amazing to realize.
Re:Darwin award... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about this stalker mind their own business and leave others alone? Nope, we can't ask for that...
Re: Darwin award... (Score:2)
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So if I track you down, drive to your house and kick 9 kinds of shit out of you it's your fault for being a dipshit on line ?
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Anyone who doesn't know that shouldn't be using the internet. ... rofl.
Kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? You don't know so you should know that you do not
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You don't know so you should know that you do not
Thats exactly how knowledge works. You know when you know, therefore you also know when you don't.
But then, you see a hundred posts a day even here on slashdot, from people that know that they dont know, but are acting like they fucking do.
If the dishonesty extends internally... that these fucks are fooling themselves.. then they have a severe dishonesty problem that can only be fixed by brow beating them in public until they get that they have a severe problem.
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Well, /me takes a pencil /me draws a small square on the paper in front, and puts in tiny letters inside: this is what I know, that I know it /me draws a small cloud besides it, because I do not know if it overlaps with the box or not: this is what I know, but don't know that I know it (aka passive knowledge) /me draws a vague circle around it and writes: "this is what I know that I don't know it" (E.G. I know w
if you think that is how knowledge works you are rather wise and at the same time dumb and wrong.
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Bzzzt! Flawed logic
This post being an example.
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Ah, victim blaming.
How about this stalker mind their own business and leave others alone? Nope, we can't ask for that...
If she wasn't vying for attention of the entire world by posting her picture on the internet she wouldn't have attracted the attention of anyone. Lest we forget the internet reaches the entire world.
If you post something online you should be aware you're broadcasting to everyone publically on the planet as if you are running naked through the streets. Anyone who doesn't know that shouldn't be using the internet.
When you willfully put yourself in the public eye of the entire planet you deal with the consequences. These girls have the naive idea when they 'post their pics' on the internet that because they are doing so from the safety of their home therefore it is somehow 'private'. No, if you post anything on the internet you are literally broadcasting as it was the sun at high noon to everyone. Once data exists on the net and people can save your file its there for good. That's the nature of digital data.
So forgive me for expecting people to think before they act, especially when how the internet and computers work is available to all.
Hey, another christian conservative male expressing his opinion that the problem is not the lunatic incels stalking and attacking women, the problem is women living their lives as they see fit.
Re: Darwin award... (Score:1)
By world population figures more likely a Muslim conservative. Also more ,ikely because such views regarding women are MUCH more mainstream in that religion.
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By world population figures more likely a Muslim conservative. Also more ,ikely because such views regarding women are MUCH more mainstream in that religion.
Hey, another christian conservative male dragging his paranoid islamophobia into yet another unrelated discussion.
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Twice you've assumed religion. Got a vendetta for some reason?
No, I'm on a site where 2/3 of the users are American and when somebody expresses arch conservative misogynistic views like that guy did the odds of him being a christian are pretty overwhelming since 70% of Americans believe in god and the vast majority of them are christians.
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I'm not a Christian conservative. If anything, I am a reformed ex-Marxist, though the cadre groups would never let me into the inner circle, because I was 'unreliable' due to my limited dogmatism.
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I'm not a Christian conservative. If anything, I am a reformed ex-Marxist, though the cadre groups would never let me into the inner circle, because I was 'unreliable' due to my limited dogmatism.
Well you did an excellent job of sounding like one of those misogynistic holy rollers on TV. Next time a woman is attacked by a deranged incel ask yourself whether it is her fault for living her life as she pleases or his fault (hint: its his fault). I'm sick and tired of misogynists blaming women for being attacked by men.
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If she wasn't vying for attention of the entire world by posting her picture on the internet she wouldn't have attracted the attention of anyone.
So because you love attention it's your fault that you were attacked? Do us a favour and go attack Donald Trump. You can try your logic on St Peter.
Re:Darwin award... (Score:5, Insightful)
If she wasn't vying for attention of the entire world by posting her picture on the internet she wouldn't have attracted the attention of anyone.
You've raised victim-blaming to a fine art.
So in your twisted little world, anyone who publishes a picture is fair game for a violent stalker?
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So in your twisted little world, anyone who publishes a picture [in public for the entire planet to see] is fair game for a violent stalker?
FTFY. You're not just "posting a picture", you're putting your picture on a planet sized bulletin board in broad day light which you know is accessable by the entire planet.
So again- in your twisted little world, anyone who publishes a picture in public for the entire planet to see is fair game for a violent stalker?
Wow, you're really one fucked-up piece of shit. But you already know that.
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Ah, victim blaming.
In the end, you and you alone are responsible for your life. You cannot absolve yourself of responsibility by playing the victim-blaming card whenever something bad happens to you. I mean you can try but in the real world that won't do you any good.
Yes, the perpetrator is to blame for the crime but the professional celebrity should have known better than to leak private information, too. If you put yourself at risk you have to expect consequences.
Re: Darwin award... (Score:2)
It depends on the circumstance. Some things that happen to us are partially or wholly our responsibility, even if they aren't our fault. There are other things we have no control over and could not reasonably predict.
Victim blaming is real. It's usually brought up when someone's personal values are such that they feel that violence is justified to enforce their own morale code. It's not a crime to victim blame, so no need to be so defensive about it when someone accuses you of it. But it is a character flaw
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There are other things we have no control over and could not reasonably predict.
This is not such a case. She is a professional celebrity. Creating PR material is part of her job.
It's not a crime to victim blame, so no need to be so defensive about it when someone accuses you of it. But it is a character flaw that you need to work on if you wish to be respected as a functioning adult.
Who is defensive? I rather feel the opposite because it bugs me when people use excuses to absolve themselves or others of their ignorance. Part of being a functioning adult is taking criticism and responsibility, not throwing buzzword tantrums. That's for teenagers on social media.
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Re: Darwin award... (Score:2)
I avoid pessimistic and negative people and I'm not the only one.
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I'm not sure there's any victim blaming here. It's just surprise at the fact that someone was able to do this.
Also, it is perhaps a criticism of the photo editing: This is an excellent reason to reduce resolution to whatever is actually needed for the intended use - something a professional photo editor ought to have been doing anyway.
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I'm not sure there's any victim blaming here. It's just surprise at the fact that someone was able to do this.
Also, it is perhaps a criticism of the photo editing: This is an excellent reason to reduce resolution to whatever is actually needed for the intended use - something a professional photo editor ought to have been doing anyway.
Even public figures (and Japanese local idol pop-stars do count as this) can only be expected to take reasonable precautions against being tracked down like this. From what I was reading she was doing the obvious stuff, like not posting recognizable backgrounds or locations, and using only broad location info rather than precise lat/long (or stripping geo data from uploads).
"Determined the location via multiple eye pupil reflections" is not something most would really have thought they'd need to worry about
This is not her fault. (Score:2)
Not her fault. I think personal opsec awareness is something long overdue though. Let people know. Tell them to yank the exif out of their images. Remind them that their 50megapixel image may reveal unintended details like bills and stuff like that.
Go ahead an pick a random c-list celebrity and see how long it takes you to find their mother's house. It's scary. I nag my whole family about their internet footprints. They listened too I was able to find much less about them through google.
The reflec
Re: Darwin award... (Score:2)
Yes, real life is more complex than children's stories. Contributory blame for something isn't necessarily always on a single person.
There's no question in anyone's eyes who the criminal is and that he should be punished.
On the other hand when someone acts in a way negligent of obvious danger, they bear some share of responsibility for what results too.
The fact that there are human predators out there - although regrettable - is to me as inevitable, factual, and inarguable as gravity. Flaunting, whether i
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Celebrity in Japan does not work that way. There are thousands of "idols" with fan followings, with most of them having little backing or handlers at all.
The majority are not much more than at the level of Youtube personalities, each one working to promote themselves.
The image was posted on social media. Why did the social media platform publish uploaded images in the highest resolution?
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The image was posted on social media. Why did the social media platform publish uploaded images in the highest resolution?
Because it was uploaded at a high resolution. I would be upset if social media lowered the resolution of pictures I post, as generally the reason I put pictures on social media is to share those images. Being a (amateur) photographer who uses a quality camera, I want the images I post to arrive as I took them and not be altered by the hosting platform.
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... if you are a celebrity and leaking data it's kind of your own fault.
That's fundamentally wrong. You might argue that it's necessary in practical terms, but being a "celebrity" is not always a conscious career choice. It just happens to some people as a by-product of what they really do - which may be very useful and constructive. I suspect the unnecessary qualifier "kind of" shows that the commenter is subconsciously aware of this.
Especially with such an amazingly sophisticated attack.
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Since once one gains a certain kind of wealth and fame you should have hired people looking out for you anyway. ... or were ever your shit hole is you live in.
Perhaps in Somalia
The story is about Japan ... ... if you are a celebrity and leaking data it's kind of your own fault. ... lol.
Sure, because you knew that I can zoom in onto your pupil and see the reflection of the other sides bus stop
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Cool! No wait... (Score:5, Interesting)
My first reaction was really that it's cool if you can actually read the reflections in someone's eyes.
Except in this case I guess. Have there been instances with poker players using this?
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Have there been instances with poker players using this?
Have there been instances with poker players using ultra high resolution cameras to record the face of their opposition mid play and analyse the footage to see the cards?
This sounds like a silly question. It IS a silly question!
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When you get to redefine 'it' , yes. I was only asking about spotting cards using reflections. Maybe in someone's glasses.
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When you get to redefine 'it' , yes. I was only asking about spotting cards using reflections. Maybe in someone's glasses.
The point I was making is you don't have even remotely this kind of visual acuity, nor the equipment available to you to do it during the game, and after the game the cards are usually published anyway.
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What if you have really good eyesight and can spot the cards from the reflection in another player's eyeball? Might be possible with practice, you don't need a perfect picture to see when someone has pocket aces, for example. Of course it would be difficult, since Texas Holdem players only take a very short peek of their cards, but not impossible.
I think he means poker over the internet (Score:2)
Reminds me, my brother has the best poker face in the world because when he plays he can't stop laughing the whole time. Makes it impossible to tell what he's thinking
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I'm not difficult. I'm happy if someone was playing cards at home and managed to spot in a reflection that their brother had a red picture card. Dedicated players have so many countermeasures to everything that they don't count.
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Poker players don't hold all their cards fanned out in front of them like in the movies.
95% of live poker games are Texas Hold'em, where each player gets dealt 2 cards and can't change them. To look at your cards, you keep them flat to the table, and raise the corner or the edge to see what your cards are. After that you don't need to look at them again. In this scenario, there would be no possibility of seeing reflections in a player's eyes.
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That could almost be interpreted as 'sure it's possible to get clues from reflections - that is why players use countermeasures'.
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It could be interpreted like that.
However, I suspect the real reason is to stop the players sitting next to you from seeing your cards the old-fashioned way.
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It seems like it was about year 2010, when digital camera resolutions were hitting about 10 or 12 megapixels, that photos started showing up that demonstrate the point. As a photo enthusiast, I would peruse the latest offerings from the camera makers and photo websites, and people were showing off this kind of stuff. For instance, a picture of a person or animal would seem like an ordinary well composed portrait or barnyard scene, but the pixel resolution was so good, that as you zoomed in on the digital
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Poker players don't count because they make things hard on purpose. I'd take the simple case where someone has pretty good eyesight and his brother keeping the cards in front of him and the first person gets enough information to deduce something, like 'there are only numbers'.
Re: I've been cyber-crippled. (Score:2)
After you ruined it you complain. Russia. (Score:2)
Complaining about your inability to shill and spam after wrecking the internet for the rest of us.
In times past I'd have happily shared my own tricks for registering good throwaway email accounts in just a few minutes but I know you assholes will trash my hard work.
Anything that allows me to keep my privacy has to be a secret now because you pricks abuse it
Japanese (Score:5, Funny)
You just have to be Japanese to do this (hey.. it's ok if it's a compliment).
Same as when I read how some guy stuck a corn cob in his ass and jumped with parachute from a 30 story building
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"even approximated the storey Matsuoka lived on based on the windows and the angle of the sunlight in her eyes." You just have to be Japanese to do this (hey.. it's ok if it's a compliment).
No you just have to be intelligent and seriously mentally disturbed.
This reminds me of when Jaden Smith and Shia Labeouf did their art project of protesting Trump by making some flag that said "He will not divide us" and having a 24/7 internet stream of it. People were screwing with it so they tried to hide it.... then crazy people on 4chan were able to find the flag by watching PLANES FLY IN THE SKY. Then it was moved and they found it by identifying the building by it's... wallpaper and tile or something. And then it was on some rooftop and they found it by looking at
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Except he did nothing with the information, as he just waited at the bus stop and followed her from behind. It's not clear what the point of including this in the story was, apart from its potential use as supporting evidence of premeditation.
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Except he did nothing with the information, as he just waited at the bus stop and followed her from behind.
And then attacked her. Did you somehow miss that part?
From the iHeartRadio story: [iheart.com] He then staked out her home and when he saw her, he attacked the 21-year-old member of the pop group Tenshitsukinukeniyomi. Ena's face was injured but overall she was okay. The police were able to identify Sato and when they confronted him, he admitted to the attack and to being a big fan of Ena's..
Never underestimate a Japanese perv (Score:1)
Bullshit (Score:2)
even approximated the storey Matsuoka lived on based on the windows and the angle of the sunlight in her eyes
Finding the storey based on the angle of the sun is simply impossible unless she lives ridiculously close to the sun, so close in fact that the sun would not really produce shadows because it would shine from just about any direction:P The sun may be helpful in finding out on what side of a building a room is. The storey can also be found based on shadows from buildings outside. But definitely not based on the angle of the sun, which is effectively the same on any storey. So that's at least one lie in this
No, distorted reporting in Slashdot (Score:2)
As is so often the case, I think the version reported in Slashdot is inaccurate. Sort of like the old telegraph game.
As I heard the story some days ago on NHK (but I have to admit that I wasn't paying that much attention and there may have been errors in the translation, too), he found the train station from the photo, not a particular bus stop. I think it even said that there were only two candidate stations based on the image. I think the eyeball image was actually shown on the TV, but if so, then I didn'
Not news. (Score:2)
It's a decade ago if not more when here on Slashdot we had reports on someone using high res video and eye reflections or similar cues to see typed passwords and other secret information.
Image editing to the rescue. Although that won't save you from creepy crazies you want to get you.
haha, (Score:2)
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You seem to forget, major corporations spend tens of millions of dollars hyping up these people, to feed the obsessions of their fans, so they will spend money on products associated with the created illusion.
How to fix it, well, to fucking easy. Stop spending money to purposefully feed the obsessions and to drive them to behaviour they would not normally contemplate, like buying the crappy music, fan rubbish and horrible concerts.
This obsessed individual did not appear from no where but was made by greed
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Full skyline, height of surrounding buildings, streets can all be seen.
We've come a long way... (Score:2)
...from seeing the nude guy taking a picture of his teapot posted on eBay.
Hackers (Score:1)
If he hacked a corporation, someone would be looking to hire him rather than imprison him. Weird.
I don't buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. If you click through to the linked articles going back to the original Japanese media reports, the claim is specifically that the images used were selfies posted to social media, which the perpetrator then compared against Google Street View. The selfie claim makes sense on one part, because management companies for Japanese idols are protective of high-resolution images and don't use high-res images for promotion, plus it also makes no sense for a pro-photoshoot to occur in front of a performer's home. However, since selfie cameras are typically lower resolution than back-cameras, and images posted to most social media platforms will be downsampled by the service itself, I think we should be skeptical of the overall claim of identification. The popularity of selfies makes this kind of story more potentially viral, which I think adds to the risk of nonsense hysteria.
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Or he may have created a false story simply because he's demonstrably insane, as evidenced by his stalking. He clearly has difficulty distinguishing fantasy and reality from each other.
Normal (Score:2)
That's why celebrities always wear sunglasses, to thwart the pupil-reading stalker.
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I know you're joking, but I recall hearing - the real reason celebrities often wear sunglasses when meeting "the public" is to disguise the fact they're not making eye contact with most people. It does project aloofness, but without appearing completely rude.
Not a pupil (Score:1)
Look at me, here I am (Score:2)
While I agree that in general it is not fair to blame the victim, and no one should subject to violent attacks, if you are not comfortable posting your name and address publicly online, you should be very careful about posting pictures of yourself. The old adage "A picture is wor
Simpler answer (Score:1)
Obligatory reference to Occam's razor [wikipedia.org].