Adrian Chen | Gawker
Last year, the FBI admitted to using large portions of a random Spanish politician’s campaign photograph for an age-progressed mockup of Osama bin Laden, which happened to look a lot like the random Spanish politician. Now he’s suing.
Spanish member of parliament Gaspar Llamazares was understandably upset when he saw that the FBI’s official digitally-aged photo of Osama bin Laden looked remarkably like him. He complained to the FBI, which admitted last January that the forensic artist who made the portrait used portions of a “photograph he found on the internet”—Llamazares’ campaign photo. Our country’s best crime-fighting force apparently uses Google image search and Photoshop Elements for their forensic work. I’m surprised they didn’t fashion their Whitey Bulger wanted poster out of different-colored macaroni.
Llamazares now says he’s suing because he was unhappy with the apology he received at the time. It must have been really annoying trying to book an international flight, too. Plus, he’s since found out that the FBI used his image for another portrait of now-deceased al-Qaida leader Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.
“I’d like to remind you that the two people whose images were put together using parts of my face have since been assassinated,” he said, according to the Guardian. The judge should let Llamazares do one act of terrorism for free, as restitution. [Images via Sky News]
The original version of the story appears here: http://gawker.com/5849125/spanish-politician-sues-fbi-for-making-him-into-osama-bin-laden
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