During the years long process of tracking down public enemy number one, a break came in September 2010. That's when Osama bin Ladin was captured exercising in the yard of his Abbottabad compound by a satellite armed with facial recognition software.Add this to the list of reasons not to do bench presses... at least not outside.. if you're a known terrorist.. and the number one target of the world's most lethal organizations.
CIA analyst 1: Holy crap! Is that bin Laden down there pumping iron?
CIA analyst 2: Where?
CIA analyst 1: Right there, next to the burning trash pile.
CIA analyst 2: Well I'll be.. sure looks like him. Run him through the face rec!
We posted here about the post-mortem face rec verification. This is the first I've seen of a face-rec verification before the raid.
UPDATE: Most every initial report about the events surrounding the bin Laden take-down have been wrong so some skepticism is in order. I can't vouch for the fact that there was satellite based recognition. But if a satellite can get a decent-quality image of a person's face, there is no technological reason why that image cannot be processed through a facial recognition system. Since face recognition is exactly that, face recognition, not top-of-the-head recognition, the bench press (where the exerciser is on his/her back ) is one possible way that a satellite would get such an image.
