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Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

bbc.com

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Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#31

Post by alephnerd »

1024core wrote: post #15
puttycat wrote: post #3

> They contacted Facebook, which at the time dominated the social media landscape, asking for help scouring uploaded family photos - to see if Lucy was in any of them. But Facebook, despite having facial recognition technology, said it "did not have the tools" to help. Willing to bet my life savings that they are able to do exactly this when the goal is to create shadow profiles or maximize some metric.

Facial recognition is very powerful these days. My friend took a photo of his kid at the top of Twin Peaks in SF, with the city in the background. Unfortunately, due to the angle, you could barely see the eyes and a portion of the nose of the kid. Android was still able to tag the kid. I feel like Facebook really dropped the ball here. It is obvious that Squire and colleagues are working for the Law Enforcement. If F…

> I feel like Facebook really dropped the ball here

This case began being investigated on January 2014 [0], which means abuse began (shudder) in 2012-13 if not earlier.

Facebook/Meta only began rolling out DeepFace [1] in June 2015 [2]

Heck, VGG-Face wasn't released until 2015 [3] and Image-Based Crowd Counting only began becoming solvable in 2015-16.

> Facial recognition is very powerful these days.

Yes. But it is 2026, not 2014.

> I hope when Zuck is lying on his death bed, he gets to think about these choices that he has made

I'm sure there are plenty of amoral choices he can think about, but not solving facial detection until 2015 is probably not one of them.

---

While it feels like mass digital surveillance, social media, and mass penetration of smartphones has been around forever it only really began in earnest just 12 years ago. The past approximately 20 years (iPhone was first released on June 2007 and Facebook only took off in early 2009 after smartphones and mobile internet became normalized) have been one of the biggest leaps in technology in the past century. The only other comparable decades were probably 1917-1937 and 1945-1965.

---

[0] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/bbc-eye-documentary-t...

[1] - https://research.facebook.com/publications/deepface-closing-...

[2] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-can-recognize-you-just...

[3] - https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/data/vgg_face/

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#32

Post by Macha »

vzaliva wrote: post #29

First of all, sorry to hear about the poor girl’s ordeal, and I’m glad she was rescued. But after reading about all that complicated digital sleuthing, it basically comes down to this: "The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother’s boyfriend - a convicted sex offender." I feel like the police should’ve started there: cross-referencing people in her close circle against a list of known sex offende…

It sounds like they had the abuse images but not her name or identity - hence asking Facebook to identify her via facial recognition search.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#33

Post by Macha »

Aurornis wrote: post #30

Am I reading this correctly that the address where they found the child was where her mother’s boyfriend was living? > "So we narrowed it down to [this] one address… and started the process of confirming who was living there through state records, driver's licence… information on schools," says Squire. > The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother's boyfriend - a convicted sex offender. There’s a…

I think the order went finding the house first and only then were they able to identify the victim (and consequently the offender)

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#34

Post by [deleted] »

puttycat wrote: post #3

> They contacted Facebook, which at the time dominated the social media landscape, asking for help scouring uploaded family photos - to see if Lucy was in any of them. But Facebook, despite having facial recognition technology, said it "did not have the tools" to help. Willing to bet my life savings that they are able to do exactly this when the goal is to create shadow profiles or maximize some metric.

[deleted]

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#35

Post by __loam »

1024core wrote: post #15
puttycat wrote: post #3

> They contacted Facebook, which at the time dominated the social media landscape, asking for help scouring uploaded family photos - to see if Lucy was in any of them. But Facebook, despite having facial recognition technology, said it "did not have the tools" to help. Willing to bet my life savings that they are able to do exactly this when the goal is to create shadow profiles or maximize some metric.

Facial recognition is very powerful these days. My friend took a photo of his kid at the top of Twin Peaks in SF, with the city in the background. Unfortunately, due to the angle, you could barely see the eyes and a portion of the nose of the kid. Android was still able to tag the kid. I feel like Facebook really dropped the ball here. It is obvious that Squire and colleagues are working for the Law Enforcement. If F…

Facebook rightly retired their facial recognition system in 2021 over concerns about user privacy. Facebook is a social media site, they are not the government or police.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#37

Post by mmooss »

vzaliva wrote: post #29

First of all, sorry to hear about the poor girl’s ordeal, and I’m glad she was rescued. But after reading about all that complicated digital sleuthing, it basically comes down to this: "The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother’s boyfriend - a convicted sex offender." I feel like the police should’ve started there: cross-referencing people in her close circle against a list of known sex offende…

I don't think they knew who Lucy was. Otherwise the search would have been much narrower and faster than 'everyone who bought this sofa'.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#39

Post by Scipio_Afri »

Macha wrote: post #33
Aurornis wrote: post #30

Am I reading this correctly that the address where they found the child was where her mother’s boyfriend was living? > "So we narrowed it down to [this] one address… and started the process of confirming who was living there through state records, driver's licence… information on schools," says Squire. > The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother's boyfriend - a convicted sex offender. There’s a…

I think the order went finding the house first and only then were they able to identify the victim (and consequently the offender)

Exactly, it sounds like they didn't know who the girl was from photos alone; "Lucy" was just a name they gave the victim.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#40

Post by Aurornis »

Macha wrote: post #33
Aurornis wrote: post #30

Am I reading this correctly that the address where they found the child was where her mother’s boyfriend was living? > "So we narrowed it down to [this] one address… and started the process of confirming who was living there through state records, driver's licence… information on schools," says Squire. > The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother's boyfriend - a convicted sex offender. There’s a…

I think the order went finding the house first and only then were they able to identify the victim (and consequently the offender)

That would make sense. Thank you.
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