Ellen Barry, The New York Times;
[Kip Currier: Fascinating example of good old-fashioned, "methodical, plodding" detective work, combined with 21st century technologies of mass surveillance and facial recognition by machines and gifted humans.
As I think about the chapters on privacy and surveillance in the ethics textbook I'm writing, this story is a good reminder of the socially-positive aspects of new technologies, amid often legitimate concerns about their demonstrated and potential downsides. In the vein of prior stories I've posted on this blog about the use, for example, of drones for animal conservation and monitoring efforts, the identification of the two Russian operatives in the Salisbury, UK poisoning case highlights how the uses and applications of digital age technologies like mass surveillance frequently fall outside the lines of "all bad" or "all good".]
"“It’s almost impossible in this country
to hide, almost impossible,” said John Bayliss, who retired from the
Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s electronic
intelligence agency, in 2010. “And with the new software they have, you
can tell the person by the way they walk, or a ring they wear, or a
watch they wear. It becomes even harder.”
The
investigation into the Skripal poisoning, known as Operation Wedana,
will stand as a high-profile test of an investigative technique Britain
has pioneered: accumulating mounds of visual data and sifting through
it...
Ceri Hurford-Jones, the managing
director of Salisbury’s local radio station, saluted investigators for
their “sheer skill in getting a grip on this, and finding out who these
people were.”
It may not have been the stuff of action films, but Mr. Hurford-Jones did see something impressive about the whole thing.
“It’s
methodical, plodding,” he said. “But, you know, that’s the only way you
can do these things. There is a bit of Englishness in it.”"
