Great Britain. Police catch pedophile after 10 years by depixelating his face in a photo

Martyn Armstrong, 50, was arrested last July. He pleaded guilty to 41 rapes of children under the age of 13, sexual harassment, and possession and distribution of child pornography. Man sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 14 years in prison –

The police caught him thanks to the face depixel tool

for almost 10 years she was looking for a man who posted a series of photos and videos on the Internet. They show how he exploits his juvenile victims. By 2022, all copies of the files have still not been removed.

Services around the world have been aware of the case since 2013, as the files were shared and downloaded in 18 countries. However, investigators in the UK, Australia, Italy and France could not identify the culprit for almost a decade because Armstrong had photoshopped his face into pixels.

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The problem was solved only by a tool that allows you to reverse this process. After using it and de-pixelating his face in the photos, the National Crime Agency was able to identify Armstrong, resulting in his capture. The man admitted that he was the one who distributed the series of photos.

Martin Ludlow of the NCA stated that he did not believe Armstrong ever thought he would be caught because he believed the face-smearing technique would protect him. But Ludlow added that the NCA and the foreign services they worked with were determined to bring the perpetrator to justice.

We were fully involved in its identification. Eventually, NCA officers devised a brand new program that led to his exposure

Ludlow said.

Such tools have been around for at least a few years and are based on machine learning algorithms. The publicly available version of Face Depixelizer, however, was characterized by considerable unreliability in facial recognition –