> One could have put the picture out to the press, and asked, "hey, do you know this person?" type of thing and gotten the same answer. There's no guarantee th

> One could have put the picture out to the press, and asked, "hey, do you know this person?" type of thing and gotten the same answer. There's no guarantee they would have done this or that they would have gotten the same answer, though, is kind of salient to the point. There's a chance they wouldn't, because you (hopefully) don't want to make someone look like a suspect to their entire community if their chances of being involved in a crime are low. And even if you do, there's a decent chance you wouldn't have gotten a reply -- especially if their loved ones believe they are innocent. And it would've alerted them and they would've had a higher chance to escape. Which is terrible thing for society if they're a genuine criminal, but a good thing when you're persecuting a non-criminal. Probabilities and collateral damage matter. If you just treat everything that is "possible" uniformly, then you might as well claim that they COULD generate a random number and just happen to identify the person correctly by sheer luck, so who cares if they do anything to optimize that.