Italian Mafia Fugitive Arrested In Spain After Google Street View Sighting (theguardian.com) 47
An Italian mafia boss on the run for 20 years was tracked down to a Spanish town after being spotted on Google Street View. The Guardian reports: Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted murderer listed among Italy's most wanted gangsters, was arrested in Galapagar, a town near Madrid, where over the years he had married, changed his name to Manuel, worked as a chef and owned a fruit and vegetable shop. Sicilian police carried out several investigations in their search for Gammino, 61, and a European arrest warrant was issued in 2014. The fugitive was traced to Spain, but it was Google Street View that helped to pinpoint his precise location.
The navigation tool, accessible through Google Maps, had captured an image of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop called El Huerto de Manu, or Manu's Garden, in Galapagar. Police believed one of the men closely resembled Gammino, but his identity was only confirmed when they came across a listing for a nearby restaurant called La Cocina de Manu or Manu's Kitchen. The shop and the restaurant are now closed, but the police found a photo of Gammino, dressed in his chef's garb, on a still-existing Facebook page for La Cocina de Manu. He was recognisable by the scar on the left side of his chin. The restaurant's menu included a dish called Cena Siciliana or Sicilian dinner. Gammino was arrested on 17 December but the details surrounding his capture did not come to light until they were reported by La Repubblica on Wednesday. Upon his arrest, Gammino reportedly told police: "How did you find me? I haven't even called my family for 10 years!"
The navigation tool, accessible through Google Maps, had captured an image of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop called El Huerto de Manu, or Manu's Garden, in Galapagar. Police believed one of the men closely resembled Gammino, but his identity was only confirmed when they came across a listing for a nearby restaurant called La Cocina de Manu or Manu's Kitchen. The shop and the restaurant are now closed, but the police found a photo of Gammino, dressed in his chef's garb, on a still-existing Facebook page for La Cocina de Manu. He was recognisable by the scar on the left side of his chin. The restaurant's menu included a dish called Cena Siciliana or Sicilian dinner. Gammino was arrested on 17 December but the details surrounding his capture did not come to light until they were reported by La Repubblica on Wednesday. Upon his arrest, Gammino reportedly told police: "How did you find me? I haven't even called my family for 10 years!"
Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score:5, Insightful)
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They probably had a tip of his new name and occupation, hence the investigation focused on those businesses. The street view image was probably a very small part of it, and they likely had warrants to see the original photos before the blur.
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No need for higher level google access. They looked up his suspected location on google and hey, they saw that one guy on the picture could well be they guy they were looking for. More an unimportant coincidence than the investigative breakthrough the Guardian is making of it.
Re:Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score:5, Insightful)
I though Google blurs faces, and license plates. So how did they really catch him? Something smells suspicious here.
It's more than likely a story concocted by the police to protect the person who ratted him out.
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Yes, looks like a parallel construction.
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yes, by the journalist.
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parallel construction.
This was my first reaction. The prosecutor said that once they found the google street view of someone looking like him in front of a restaurant and then they looked up the restaurant on Facebook and positively ID'ed him from photos of the owner on their Facebook page.
Ok... sure. Yeah. They randomly drove around in google street view for years by hand trying to find someone who looks like him on the street....
They definitely didn't use facial recognition software from Clearview AI who we know scraped Face
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Either the face blurring only applies to the pictures taken by the Google cars themselves and not to images uploaded by users, or the algorithm sometimes doesn't work reliably. Just a few days ago I was using Google Earth to check out images of the view over Rio de Janeiro from Cristo Redentor, and there were plenty of pictures of people without blurred faces.
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I though Google blurs faces, and license plates. So how did they really catch him? Something smells suspicious here.
It's more than likely a story concocted by the police to protect the person who ratted him out.
Parallel contruction, as said below, and above, and the officers and their superiors should be executed.
Re:Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score:5, Informative)
I though Google blurs faces, and license plates. So how did they really catch him? Something smells suspicious here.
The FA is clear that this isn't chance:
“It’s not as if we spend our days wading through Google Maps to find fugitives,” he told the Guardian. “There were many previous and long investigations, which led us to Spain.
They obviously had a lead to the business, pulled it up on Street View, and as a bonus someone looking like the wanted man happened to be in the shot. A bit more digging found a FB photo.
Re: Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score:2)
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Re: Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score:2)
They probably have google running facial recognition for them...
Re:Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words google streetview only accidentally offered a little bit of confirmation but did not influence the event. The rest of the story was merely sexed up for clickbait reasons.
Re: Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score:2)
Google runs facial recognition before the blur
Re:Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, don't you know how this works? When you see the blurry face on the screen, you just have to shout "ENHANCE!" a few times, and then you've got your man.
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you just have to shout "ENHANCE!" a few times, and then you've got your man.
It's a bit more complicated [vimeo.com] than that.
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It would actually work in this case, the information was present in the original photographs and the blur filter is presumably deterministic. This is how Christopher Paul Neil aka Swirl Face was caught, this child molester posted images with his face modified with a Swirl filter, which police experts reverted to see his face and match to their database.
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Not really. The swirl algorithm reorders data points, while the blur algorithm combines data points. Both are deterministic but one of them is one-way.
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I haven't even called my family for 10 years! (Score:3)
But.... somehow he figured that posting his image on Bookface was somehow ok?
Must be true... they don't catch the smart ones!
Re: Bookface (Score:2)
Facebook for inmates.
Re: I haven't even called my family for 10 years! (Score:2)
Who said he was the one that posted it?
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He didn't post his photo, the restaurant did. You know, if you visit a restaurant website, sometimes they give you photos of their chefs and other key people. Now, if your star chef requests you don't post a photo of him despite having photos of all the other chefs, it gets a bit odd.
I don't get it (Score:2)
It doesn't make sense. It makes so little sense that I wonder if its not a cover story, e.g. some witness / informant spotted the guy and told the cops, or his wanted page logged visitor I
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes so little sense that I wonder if its not a cover story
I suspect it was simply just a tiny piece of the investigation that got blown out of proportion by a reporter looking for a story. Looking at the picture, even with the face blurred it would be a useful bit of info to add to your stack of evidence, if you already suspected the guy lived in that town.
What does that tell you? (Score:3)
Images from the Google surveillance cars - sorry, Street View cars - get sent to the authorities, complete with faces, license plates, views of people's properties etc, because the faces, license plates and views of people's properties are blurred.
I should be glad the mafia boss was caught, but in reality the very way he was caught sends chills down my spine.
George Orwell predicted everything correctly aside from one detail: it's not the state that does the surveillance, if the corporat monopolies on behalf of the state that, in returns, lets the monopolies exist without breaking them up.
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Surely this isn't about what Google's doing, but more the weakness of our country's privacy laws? Hasn't Google given up on Street View in Germany because they were getting too many requests to obscures people's homes, as required by German privacy laws? Given the country's history, I can understand why its citizens value their privacy.
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But we don't really know how how he was caught. If you RTFA, you'll see that the investigation was extensive and the StreetView part was just a tiny piece of it. It's the Newspaper that chose to make the tory about Google StreetView, not the police. Given that they also identified the man from an image he posted on Facebook, The Guardian could equally have run the headline "Italian mafia fugitive arrested in Spain after he posted on Facebook".
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StreetView part was just a tiny piece of it
The fact that it played any role in it, however small, is the disturbing bit.
People need to die for your theoretical beliefs? (Score:2)
I should be glad the mafia boss was caught, but in reality the very way he was caught sends chills down my spine.
George Orwell predicted everything correctly aside from one detail: it's not the state that does the surveillance, if the corporat monopolies on behalf of the state that, in returns, lets the monopolies exist without breaking them up.
So people should LITERALLY die because you have an esoteric fear of theoretical behavior that hasn't happened?...and also some dislike of big tech?
As you said, you should be glad a violent murderer is off the streets. That is literally life or death.
I don't really get privacy/liberty purists. There's a sweet spot and threshold. Google needs to collect photos to make Google Maps, which I would argue is an essential service. I can't state enough how much I rely on it (or one of their competitors) as
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Delayed justice is still a deterrent (Score:2)
Blah, blah, blah. The murderer was "retired" anyway and likely not a risk anymore. This just means that taxpayers will be paying to keep one more geriatric in prison for the next few decades. Fuck those cops. It's a shame they didn't die in the pandemic last year.
So murder is OK so long as it's in the past? They not only put him in jail, but seize his assets and investigate further to find more active murders associated with the crime family. Precisely why do you like organized crime so much you wish the police force death?
If protocol was "Just stop murdering for a few years and you're a free man," that incentivizes crime. Showing that you will have your day in court and be held accountable for the rest of your life is a deterrent.
Organized crime is rational
Location, location, location (Score:5, Informative)
If anybody is interested in looking at the image for themselves, it's at 40.5766 -4.0031 in Galapagar in Spain. The face is blurred, but I'd say, if you knew who you were looking for, it would confirm his location.
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If anybody is interested in looking at the image for themselves, it's at 40.5766 -4.0031 in Galapagar in Spain.
Or you could click on the link to the article which starts with the picture.
The face is blurred, but I'd say, if you knew who you were looking for, it would confirm his location.
Agreed.
Does this mean (Score:1)
One big take-away (Score:1)
Based on others' comments, Google Street View sometimes fails to blur faces.
Face recog (Score:2)
Face recognition software works on low resolution images, just not as precisely as high res. For example: https://www.barcodeart.com/art... [barcodeart.com]