DNA Proves Slain Terrorist is bin Laden & Facial Recognition Confirms: Bin Laden is Dead
By Bridget Johnson, & By William Deutsch,
The White House announced late last night that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in a nighttime raid in Pakistan, sparking street celebrations in New York and Washington. Far from hidin...g in a dusty cave, bin Laden was holed up in a three-story fortress Abbottabad, a town about 35 miles north of Islamabad, a well-to-do area that is home to many retired Pakistani military officials. After quickly turning the terror figurehead's body into fish food by dumping him at sea, administration officials have just said that DNA tests prove that the man killed is in fact bin Laden.
Now the U.S. will have to pick a way in which to release photos of bin Laden's body. But will that stop conspiracy theorists? Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said it "didn't make a lot of sense" to bury him at sea so quickly. The U.S. defended the decision as being a burial in accordance with Islamic law and not creating any sort of burial place that could serve as a shrine to the man who ordered the deadliest terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
The last bin Laden message came on Jan. 21 (Al-Jazeera has a complete timeline), but for years al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri has been a more public face of the terror organization in its videos. Not only could the killing of bin Laden make al-Qaeda and its affiliates more determined to retaliate against the U.S. and her allies, but other Islamist terror organizations will be anxious to step up to the plate.
On June 7, 1999 Osama bin Laden became one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted. Today, his picture sports a red banner reading "Deceased."However, it didn't take long for conspiracy theories to spin up over the exact identity of the man killed in Abbottabad on Sunday. So how exactly was bin Laden's death confirmed? Various news agencies are reporting that the CIA's own facial recognition technology identified the face of Osama bin Laden with 95% accuracy. Facial recognition works by mapping points on a face and creating a biometric template. The template is, essentially, a digital code that describes the subject's face. The trick with facial recogntion has always been that images taken from even slightly different angles will result in a variation of the the biometric template. So a 95% match is about as good as it gets.
In addition to the facial recognition technology, authorities have apparently compared bin Laden's DNA to that of several of his relatives. The exact identity and number of the relatives used for the DNA samples has not been revealed. No surprise there. It's not unthinkable that the government has also been able to collect samples of bin Laden's own DNA from locations where he has lived over the years. The body was also identified by a female survivor of the attack; a woman believed to be one of bin Laden's wives.See more
By Bridget Johnson, & By William Deutsch,
The White House announced late last night that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in a nighttime raid in Pakistan, sparking street celebrations in New York and Washington. Far from hidin...g in a dusty cave, bin Laden was holed up in a three-story fortress Abbottabad, a town about 35 miles north of Islamabad, a well-to-do area that is home to many retired Pakistani military officials. After quickly turning the terror figurehead's body into fish food by dumping him at sea, administration officials have just said that DNA tests prove that the man killed is in fact bin Laden.
Now the U.S. will have to pick a way in which to release photos of bin Laden's body. But will that stop conspiracy theorists? Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said it "didn't make a lot of sense" to bury him at sea so quickly. The U.S. defended the decision as being a burial in accordance with Islamic law and not creating any sort of burial place that could serve as a shrine to the man who ordered the deadliest terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
The last bin Laden message came on Jan. 21 (Al-Jazeera has a complete timeline), but for years al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri has been a more public face of the terror organization in its videos. Not only could the killing of bin Laden make al-Qaeda and its affiliates more determined to retaliate against the U.S. and her allies, but other Islamist terror organizations will be anxious to step up to the plate.
On June 7, 1999 Osama bin Laden became one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted. Today, his picture sports a red banner reading "Deceased."However, it didn't take long for conspiracy theories to spin up over the exact identity of the man killed in Abbottabad on Sunday. So how exactly was bin Laden's death confirmed? Various news agencies are reporting that the CIA's own facial recognition technology identified the face of Osama bin Laden with 95% accuracy. Facial recognition works by mapping points on a face and creating a biometric template. The template is, essentially, a digital code that describes the subject's face. The trick with facial recogntion has always been that images taken from even slightly different angles will result in a variation of the the biometric template. So a 95% match is about as good as it gets.
In addition to the facial recognition technology, authorities have apparently compared bin Laden's DNA to that of several of his relatives. The exact identity and number of the relatives used for the DNA samples has not been revealed. No surprise there. It's not unthinkable that the government has also been able to collect samples of bin Laden's own DNA from locations where he has lived over the years. The body was also identified by a female survivor of the attack; a woman believed to be one of bin Laden's wives.See more
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