14 ms·
Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse
- d--b 8mo agoGreat article. On HN though “dark web agent” sounds like some AI bot did the work. It was far more interesting the way they did it.
- missingdays 8mo agoSo "agent" only means "AI agent" now?
- Gracana 8mo agoThat's what I was expecting, too. Quite an interesting story regardless.
- blahaj 8mo agoYou can do the same yourself here: https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse
- belter 8mo ago[flagged]
- belter 8mo ago[flagged]
- stronglikedan 8mo ago[flagged]
- GaggiX 8mo agoThere is only one location shown in the images, in the past there were several and much clearer, I cannot image how difficult it must be to find it if the europol cannot find it in 2026. Old thread for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19469681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19469681
- deadbabe 8mo agoI feel like I'm gonna puke, just knowing these are all cut out from images where a child is being sexually abused makes them feel so cursed.
- puttycat 8mo ago> They contacted Facebook, which at the time dominated the social media landscape, asking for help scouring uploaded family photos - to see if Lucy was in any of them. But Facebook, despite having facial recognition technology, said it "did not have the tools" to help. Willing to bet my life savings that they are able to do exactly this when the goal is to create shadow profiles or maximize some metric.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- garbawarb 8mo ago> From that list of 40 or 50 people, it was easy to find and trawl their social media. And that is when they found a photo of Lucy on Facebook with an adult who looked as though she was close to the girl - possibly a relative. It sounds like Facebook was a huge boost to the investigation despite that.
- defrost 8mo agoFacebook did nothing to assist in narrowing a search area. What Facebook actually did was host images .. so that after the team narrowed a list down to under 100 people they could look through profiles by hand. It may as well have been searching Flickr, Instagram, Etsy, etc. profiles by hand.
- garbawarb 8mo agoYes, and if Facebook didn't exist, presumably these images connecting the abuser to the victim wouldn't have been available anywhere for the investigators to find.
- jmye 8mo agoIf Facebook didn’t exist, they would’ve found the photos on MySpace. Come on. All Facebook likely did here that was any different than any other social media platform would have done, was gather Sandberg, Zuck and a cadre of snotty, sniveling engineers in a conference room and debate whether this was good engagement for the platform.
- throwaway5465 8mo agoThis speaks volumes of the moral values of Facebook vs the brick industry.
- fidgetstick 8mo ago> "He goes: 'Bricks are heavy.' And he said: 'So heavy bricks don't go very far.'" Move slow, build things.
- conductr 8mo agoTbf the brick industry helped indirectly and it just happened to be super helpful. They didn’t perform a mass mining of user data across the whole country or a large region. They had very little data to go off other than someone’s past memory of the material. I’m Facebook would have helped in that way too if it was able to. However, this is exactly how I’d have hoped Facebook would have responded without some sort of court order for data, they shouldn’t be mining everything at the mere request for help by a law enforcement agency. I get this topic is one where you’d wish there was an exception but exceptions are slippery slopes.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- roryirvine 8mo agoIt helps that the brick industry is already set up to offer this - "brick matching" from photographs is a valuable service for architects, builders, and home improvement firms.
- xvxvx 8mo agoRelated: A researcher for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, warned executives at the tech giant that there may be upward of 500,000 cases of sexual exploitation of minors per day on the social media platforms. https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/meta-researcher-warned-500k-child-exploitation-cases-daily-facebook-instagram-platforms?%3Fintcmp=fb_fbn&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/meta-researcher-warned... Who needs the dark web when Meta exists and is protected by the US government? Edit: downvotes? Lol
- plagiarist 8mo agoTBF these easily could be cases of Meta protecting the US government rather than vice versa.
- zmgsabst 8mo agoI always need to contextualize these numbers: - there are 2.4B under 18 globally - which means 500k is 0.02% of all children - or around 1 in 5000 children globally, per day - if evenly distributed (which is unlikely), then roughly 7-8% of all kids would feature in Meta exploitation yearly That suggests very high reoccurrence; but even reoccurrence suggests the total rate remains quite high. A reoccurrence rate of 100x would suggest that roughly 1 in 1000 kids is exploited on Meta, yearly. Anyway, disturbing.
- jsheard 8mo agoSee also: the 17-strike policy for sex trafficking. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/11/22/meta-strike-policy-sex-trafficking-violations-testimony/87425612007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/11/22/meta-strike-po...
- xvxvx 8mo agoUnbelievable. I mean, believable.. but WTF?
- pants2 8mo agoThat headline seems like a stretch after reading the article (Fox after all) > sexually inappropriate messages were sent to "~500k victims per DAY in English markets only." This sounds like a total count of unsolicited sexual messages sent to all users every day.
- anonym29 8mo ago[flagged]
- hyperhello 8mo agoHave you ever dealt with a pedophile? I ask that incidentally, neutrally, in the sense of, have you ever dealt with a flat tire or mold in the attic.
- anonym29 8mo agoNo, but note that my comment didn't mention pedophiles. Someone being a convicted sex offender should already be a big enough red flag that any parent with a working brain shouldn't ever let that person anywhere near their kids.
- hyperhello 8mo agoThen have you ever dealt with a convicted sex offender, same question.
- anonym29 8mo agoYes. I immediately broke off all contact with them as soon as I learned about it.
- Nextgrid 8mo agoNote: the "agent" the title refers to has nothing to do with an AI/LLM agent. Originally I thought this had something to do with an AI agent, as if someone put an AI agent in charge of identifying dark web pictures for clues. It's a good story nevertheless and I'm glad the victim was rescued, but nothing to do with AI/LLMs.
- dafelst 8mo agoThe term "agent" with regards to law enforcement substantially predates "agent" in the context of AI.
- OisinMoran 8mo agoTo be fair, I initially had the same thought, and the HN item just two below this as I write also has agent (but the LLM kind) in its title.
- palmotea 8mo ago> The term "agent" with regards to law enforcement substantially predates "agent" in the context of AI. The GP's account was created in 2019, so being born yesterday is not an excuse available to them.
- Nextgrid 8mo agoTrue, but with every other article on HN being about AI nowadays I assumed there was something to it.
- changoplatanero 8mo agoWas this guy law enforcement? How did he get the addresses of everyone who had bought that model of couch?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- tintor 8mo agoFrom the article: "Squire works for US Department of Homeland Security Investigations in an elite unit ..."
- 1024core 8mo agoFTA: > Squire works for US Department of Homeland Security Investigations in an elite unit which attempts to identify children appearing in sexual abuse material.
- jeremyjh 8mo agoStrange to think that right now, the people doing that work are not getting paid for it.
- estearum 8mo agoDHS? There are a lot of different orgs doing this type of work, but I'm pretty sure (nearly?) all of them are getting paid to do it. Horrific job though.
- rootusrootus 8mo agoProbably a reference to the shutdown.
- estearum 8mo agoAh! Got it. "Right now" narrowly defined. Thank you :)
- nebezb 8mo agoI’ve spent just a teeny bit of time helping international ICE investigators (not that one; internet child exploitation) postpone PTSD with technology. It seems like after two years of their job, they’re going to have a mental break. So postponing is all you can really do. It’s disheartening how underfunded these agencies are compared to, what feels like at least, the severity of the crimes they’re up against. These folks are heroes. This is one place AI has a lot of potential (but very little commercial value).
- Gigachad 8mo agoModeration feels like the one of the most ethical uses of AI. Being able to prevent a lot of the worst content from being posted and preventing people from being exposed to it.
- throwaway290 8mo agoSure... so now we end up with people watching abuse 9 to 5 to train AI. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/05/in-the-end-you-feel-blank-indias-female-workers-watching-hours-of-abusive-content-to-train-ai https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/05/i...
- emsign 8mo agoOutsourcing everything. Even PTSD from training AI to India so privileged law enforcement officers and social media moderators don't have to. This system is so hypocritical and broken.
- Gigachad 8mo agoI don't think the issue here is related to AI. Without AI, moderators would still have to look at these same videos. The difference is they would hit the public first before being flagged and sent to moderators. Now with AI they can be prevented from ever going public. The fact that we still need to traumatize workers to confirm the automated decisions is sad. The only other ways I can see to resolve this would be either to just blindly trust the AI result without any human oversight, or to require all facebook users to link their government ID to accounts and only allow posting by users in countries where the authorities arrest the people posting these things.
- 1024core 8mo agoI'm wondering why they didn't cross reference the addresses they had from the furniture stores with those of registered sex offenders, as this abuser turned out to be? And further intersect that with "Flaming Alamo" brick houses??
- alephnerd 8mo agoFrom TFA: "Initially Squire was ecstatic, expecting they could access a digitised customer list. But Harp broke the news that the sales records were just a "pile of notes" that went back decades."
- ggm 8mo agoperiodically the various forces tackling CSAM release images which are ENTIRELY SFW, and are purely of a jersey, a backpack, a location, a tea setting, and ask people to tell them things: Was this available in Belgium? Did you ever see this in a second hand shop? Do you recognise the logo on this bag? Information inside images is useful for this kind of struggle to identify victims of crime.
- normie3000 8mo agoSounds a bit more productive than Wordle. How can we get involved?
- nebezb 8mo agohttps://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse
- DavidPiper 8mo agoFor any Australians here, there is also https://www.accce.gov.au/what-we-do/trace-an-object https://www.accce.gov.au/what-we-do/trace-an-object - I hope there are similar sites for other regions too.
- rithdmc 8mo agoDon't region lock yourself - abuse investigations in Europe or Australia may be from abuse in a different jurisdiction. Alternatively, a gift given from an Australian family member to a European could be a bit of information that helps an investigation rule out or close in on a potential abuser.
- __jonas 8mo agoThis seems like the perfect job/challenge for those GeoGuesser pros
- boobsbr 8mo agoI tried helping with that once, but after looking at a few images, I really felt like throwing up. I'm not built for this.
- vzaliva 8mo agoFirst of all, sorry to hear about the poor girl’s ordeal, and I’m glad she was rescued. But after reading about all that complicated digital sleuthing, it basically comes down to this: "The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother’s boyfriend - a convicted sex offender." I feel like the police should’ve started there: cross-referencing people in her close circle against a list of known sex offenders.
- Macha 8mo agoIt sounds like they had the abuse images but not her name or identity - hence asking Facebook to identify her via facial recognition search.
- mmooss 8mo agoI don't think they knew who Lucy was. Otherwise the search would have been much narrower and faster than 'everyone who bought this sofa'.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- globular-toast 8mo agoOr, you know, if they knew who she was they would just go and rescue her? How are people struggling so much with basic logic on this one? This is quite strange. Are some of you just unable to imagine having limited knowledge and not being able to just look everything up?
- Aurornis 8mo agoAm I reading this correctly that the address where they found the child was where her mother’s boyfriend was living? > "So we narrowed it down to [this] one address… and started the process of confirming who was living there through state records, driver's licence… information on schools," says Squire. > The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother's boyfriend - a convicted sex offender. There’s a lot of focus on Facebook in the comments here, but unless I’m missing something the strangest part about this story was that the child’s mother was dating a convicted sex offender and they had to go through all of this process to arrive at this? It’s impressive detective work with the brick expert identifying bricks and the sofa sellers gathering their customer list, but how did this connection not register earlier? EDIT: As others have pointed out, the wording is confusing. They made these connections to the identity only after identifying the house
- Macha 8mo agoI think the order went finding the house first and only then were they able to identify the victim (and consequently the offender)
- Scipio_Afri 8mo agoExactly, it sounds like they didn't know who the girl was from photos alone; "Lucy" was just a name they gave the victim.
- Aurornis 8mo agoThat would make sense. Thank you.
- slow_typist 8mo agoYou could still run the sofa customers list against a list of known offenders but is there a federal list? Maybe the number of states where the sofa was sold was to large and getting the full list not feasible?
- rectang 8mo ago
- poketdev 8mo ago[flagged]
- sciencesama 8mo agoNot sure how we can help such heros !! These are the people that make the world a better place !!
- jimt1234 8mo agoI can't understand how anyone can do such a job for any length of time. I worked at a PC repair shop back in the 90s, fixed some dude's PC, and I saw a bunch of CSAM stuff (a lot, like thousands of pics, all children). I reported it to the local cops, then the FBI got involved, and that's the last I heard of it. My point is that the memory of those pics haunt me to this day. And I only saw a handful of pics, over, maybe, a period of about 2 minutes. To do that all day, everyday - how could one not become an alcoholic?
- Seattle3503 8mo agoyeah and from the article, it sounds like they chat with the perps and befriend them to build trust.
- doodlebugging 8mo agoThis is an old story about an old investigation. It is old news dredged up to try to win sympathy for DHS/ICE. It is propaganda resurrected to make DHS look useful. They cherry-picked a story that they knew would win public sympathy since no one wants a child molester to run free. Lets show a time when an agent solved a case for an excellent outcome. Pick a DHS/ICE story from this year and see what kind of dystopic shitshow you report on. This is propaganda. Gullible people fall for this shit every day. Put some thought into the context before you swallow the turd.
- refulgentis 8mo agoSubmitter is Canadian and re: America, posted "I read recently that Patrimonialism is a good way of describing the current regime" about 10 months ago. Doesn't sound like paid DHS/ICE psyopper. Any reason to think it is? EDIT: Got the "you're posting too fast", so in reply to OP below: > Submitter's nationality has nothing to do with it nor does his post history. WTF Well, yes it does, its exculpatory evidence for a stranger you publicly accused of dredging up the news to try and win sympathy for DHS/ICE. (twice now) Original post, by you: "It is old news dredged up to try to win sympathy for DHS/ICE." This post, by you: "why do they need to dredge it up today?"
- morkalork 8mo agoFrom the fine article itself: >Within hours, local Homeland Security agents had arrested the offender, who had been raping Lucy for six years.
- refulgentis 8mo agoThe claim is that an article was submitted intentionally to manipulate public perception of DHS. We can't relax the claim to "well, it says DHS found a pedo, so it's propaganda ipso facto, because DHS did something good": they specifically argue the submission was the propaganda, specifically because it'd be absurd to claim it was published as DHS propaganda. (it's an article by the BBC)
- 8mo ago
- jalapenos 8mo ago[flagged]
- apt-apt-apt-apt 8mo agoWhat about cases where we get the wrong guy? The system messes up sometimes, people can get framed, etc. Doing eye for an eye here, say putting a broom somewhere cough for 6 years, only to find out he's innocent would be pretty bad.
- cbdevidal 8mo agoNon-paywalled copy: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/dark-agent-spotted-bedroom-wall-220239918.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/dark-agent-spotted-bedro...
- glpy2yi 8mo ago[dead]
- oxag3n 8mo agoIs there a way to volunteer for such investigations?
- nubg 8mo agohttps://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse
- krater23 8mo agoA article this long just to blame facebook to not give away private data to a three letter organization.
- jacquesm 8mo agoSo, I had a friend. Had because he's dead. He did this work for a decade and a half and then couldn't deal with it anymore. In that time he put countless assholes behind bars. At some point he stopped responding to my emails so I called the unit and they were absolutely devastated, this guy was the backbone of their operation, the one with by far the most computer experience of all of them. RIP Ronald. It is very hard to imagine what the life of someone on the frontline is like, the ones that are really battling online scum. So take that 'think of the children' thing and realize that there are people who really do think of the children and it is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. Quote from TFA: "The BBC asked Facebook why it couldn't use its facial recognition technology to assist the hunt for Lucy. It responded: "To protect user privacy, it's important that we follow the appropriate legal process, but we work to support law enforcement as much as we can." So, privacy matters to FB when it is to protect the abusers of children. How low can you go...
- Gigachad 8mo agoThe authorities simply needed to start an ad campaign with facebook targeting child abusers. Then FB would have that data packaged up and ready to sell in an instant.
- vasco 8mo agoThat last bit is not really how it works. I've been in a small company that law enforcement would routinely reach out to for help with solving crimes because they thought we'd have relevant data. 99% of requests are wild goose chases based on nothing. Like literally dumb requests that are not only irrelevant, the request wouldn't even get past that cops boss, much less a judge. But a cop can just ask whatever they want regardless of merit or relevance and it's up to you to say yes or no. In those years we received two requests with warrants that made more sense but when I see "company denied to help" I understand why. Most cases it's a random cop fishing for private info that has nothing to do with anything. And when it's true, just get a warrant then. Otherwise you're more likely to be jeopardizing innocent people's data than actually helping anyone.
- 88379937 8mo ago
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- eqvinox 8mo ago[dead]
- bigiain 8mo agoMaybe it's just me, and I wouldn't have thought this a few years back, but my immediate reaction as I started reading this was "Oh look, somehow they got the fucking _BBC_ to run a DHS whitewashing feel good story. I wonder what's about to hit the media that they'd like buried?"
- gnarlouse 8mo agoOn the one hand, this is a beautiful (but depressing) story about humans standing up for each other. On the other hand, this is clearly propaganda from the BBC to push police state functionality on the UK population by pre-justifying it. "See what happens? Never mind the part about it taking six years. Let us see everything in your fucking lives, you twats."
- tr888 8mo agoI have literally no idea how you've ended up at that conclusion from the article!
- butlike 8mo agoSame. In a world where police agents are committing atrocities, a world where ICE agents are running amok, it's nice to hear about some actual good that comes from the police force
- tqi 8mo agoPlus a chance to dunk on their biggest competitor for ad revenue and clicks (Facebook)
- lambdaone 8mo agoNone of this required a police state. Just people working together to cross-correlate information in the way that you would expect to be able to do in an open society. What wrong do you think was done here? What would you prefer to be different?
- hnburnsy 8mo ago>Flaming Alamos were not visible on the outside of any of the homes, because the properties were clad in other materials. But the team asked Harp to assess - by looking at their style and exterior - if these properties were likely to have been built during a period when Flaming Alamos had been on sale. "We would basically take a screenshot of that house or residence and shoot it over to John and say 'would this house have these bricks inside?'" says Squire. Zillow and tax assessors will list the age\year built of any property.
- h33t-l4x0r 8mo ago[dead]
- ekianjo 8mo ago> The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother's boyfriend - a convicted sex offender. Erm... Are they that clueless they didn't start from there?
- sevg 8mo agoTo know who the mother was they’d have to first know the identity of the child.
- TazeTSchnitzel 8mo agoAnother example of tiny details being used to catch sex offenders is this story about marks on people's hands: https://www.wired.com/story/sue-black-forensics-hand-markings-paedophiles-rapists/ https://www.wired.com/story/sue-black-forensics-hand-marking... / https://archive.is/89vOJ https://archive.is/89vOJ It turns out that, even if all you can see is the assailant's hands, that may be enough to identify them.
- neom 8mo agoJust got done the doc they made. Long, disgusting, but informative/interesting from a tech/problem solving prospective. Not an easy watch tho. https://youtu.be/mNUku0jd4FA https://youtu.be/mNUku0jd4FA
- emsign 8mo agoYet at the same time the status of Terabytes of abuse material seized from Epstein's properties is unknown because the abusers are rich guys protected by the president who is probably one of them. And law enforcement is actively helping to obstruct justice for the thousands of victims. There's dozens or hundreds of abusers easily identifiable in there and so this hero story is just propaganda at this time.
- DeathArrow 8mo ago>From that list of 40 or 50 people, it was easy to find and trawl their social media. And that is when they found a photo of Lucy on Facebook with an adult who looked as though she was close to the girl - possibly a relative. >They worked out the woman's address And yet they didn't bother to knock on the door.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- rollulus 8mo agoSo do I read it correctly that good old detective work did the job, and that breaking e2e encryption and client side scanning wasn’t needed? Politicians tell me a different story.
- JimmyBuckets 8mo agoNot that I agree with either of those things but I think the implicit argument is that breaking encryption would lead to faster arrest and fewer years of abuse for the victims.
- sva_ 8mo agoExcept people wouldnt post such material to TOR if they knew the crypto is backdoored. They'd post it to an alternative that ignores the law
- emsign 8mo agoThey don't even arrest pedophiles when they have them on video tape and a client list when the president is on them. This has all become one big joke, justice I mean. There is no justice.
- MagicMoonlight 8mo agoYou’d think so, but the police already have tons of methods they don’t use. The bottleneck is always staffing, not crazy shit they wouldn’t even be allowed to use.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- ogurechny 8mo agoThis is actually both. It's not a big secret to journalists that such stories are just another kind of entertainment that never fails to attract the public. Certain people constantly work in that genre. Readers want to be assured that something is excluded. I visit the good sunny side of the internet, and horrors are on some “darknet”. I live in the better part of the town, and horrors happen in bad districts. Me and my friends are “normal people”, never “victims”. Wars are far away. I am not responsible for anything. Certain people's careers are made in such pandering. So they tell a thrilling detective story, and at the same time publicly shame Facebook to make people think that more control over “important services” and more backdoors are needed. Only for serious cases, of course. You wouldn't want to support those people, would you? Good. Now show us you licence number for internet usage. Lies upon lies upon lies.
- ralfd 8mo ago> "And the woman on the phone was awesome. She was like, 'how can the brick industry help?'" That is an epic sentence!
- Surac 8mo agofirst part of the article reads: Darkweb a encrypted part of the internet. Isn't darkweb just the part where bots don't index? is it realy encrypted?
- Vinnl 8mo agoI think that that's the Deep Web.
- NoboruWataya 8mo agoI thought that was the deep web. The dark web I always understood as referring to the Tor network.
- emil-lp 8mo agoIt's all encrypted.
- LightBug1 8mo agoFricken love this story ... And now I'm thinking who *wouldn't* want to volunteer to go all in on this kind of stuff once their main work winds down? (Facebook apparently). ... starts looking for dark web vigilante groups
- sho_hn 8mo agoI'm impressed by the people doing this job. How do you turn off at the end of the shift and go home to sleep, when you know an hour more of work could make a more immediate difference? How does work/life balance work in this profession?
- delaminator 8mo agoMicki Pistorius (yes, Oscar Pistorius' aunt) talks about this in her auto-biography - Catch Me a Killer (2000) [also made as a TV series of the same name in 2024] To paraphrase "How can I sleep when I am the key to finding these murderers." She was involved in more than thirty serial killer cases while at South African Police Service (SAPS) working as a Criminal Profiler. It took a great toll on her life but she was ultimately able to overcome the stress of it.
- p3opl3 8mo agoThis is awesome - but they shouldn't have revealed the secret on how they caught them.. like 1000's of other offenders could land up making similar mistakes. It just makes sense to keep your mouth shut and keep on hunting.
- pawelduda 8mo agoI thought so too, but it actually wasn't the couch, brick or whatever. It was overconfidence and mistakes that were exploited and there is no patch for that
- globular-toast 8mo agoThis is a common dilemma in intelligence. One of the most famous examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_telegram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_telegram
- gzread 8mo agoHuman agents, for once, not AI agents.
- mexicocitinluez 8mo agoI wonder if the GeoGuesser guy has ever been reached out to by LE.
- gosub100 8mo agoGood thing the perp wasn't part of the Epstein class, otherwise they would have done all that work for nothing. On a more serious note, there is a subreddit where police can post redacted pics of CSAM and they crowd source info on the background. I can't remember the name of it though. They post godbolt style questions like "where is this beach/playground/parking lot", or ask what brand an object is. I don't know how much success they have had but it's a worthy cause and the more people who try, the higher their chances.
- haritha-j 8mo agoChildren and lost dogs are sadly the fist excuse to justify the serveillance state.
- gallamine 8mo agothis is a circular reasoning fallacy
- farceSpherule 8mo ago[dead]
- chaostheory 8mo agoVery interesting account, but this article is also sounding like it’s for eliminating the thin layer of privacy that we have remaining.
- etruong42 8mo agoThis is amazing ingenuity and collaboration. I wonder if Rainbolt (or other GeoGuessrs) gets regular requests for consultation, or maybe he should if he is not already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Rainbolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Rainbolt
- costco 8mo agoThis wouldn't have helped here but there is a related field of research called hotel recognition. Many of these videos are filmed in hotels so being able to recognize if it was a Mariott or even better a non chain local hotel can be very helpful to investigators. They basically train CNNs that learn to pick up on the bathroom fixtures or kind of bedding used by different hotels. One researcher in particular has done a tone of work on this: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mNoB9SgAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mNoB9SgAAAAJ&hl=en I wonder if you could get the interior of every house from Zillow/realtor websites and then do something like this for every house in the country... Clearview for bedrooms?