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American Morning

Interview of Candice Skrapec, Professor of Criminology

Aired December 19, 2001 - 09:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Here's a question: Do you recognize this guy? Not that guy. This guy. Oh, that's pretty.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Nice hair there.

CAFFERTY: What about this one? Turns out they're both Osama bin Laden in altered states, but then you could figure that out on your own. United States is concerned that bin Laden, in fact, could use a disguise to help him as he tries to make an escape. With the help of a new computer program that is called "Faces," we're going to see how bin Laden might look if he changed his appearance, and here to help us sort out the many faces of Osama bin Laden, and explain a little bit about how the software works, professor of criminology at Cal State Fresno, Candice Skrapec. Nice to have you with us, Professor. Is it real --

CANDICE SKRAPEC, PROFESSOR OF CRIMINOLOGY, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY: Good morning.

CAFFERTY: Is it realistic that Osama bin Laden could actually look like some of these -- they almost look like caricatures -- that we were looking at?

SKRAPEC: Right. And certainly this was done very quickly last night, but, indeed, the main features of him when a little bit more time is taken to do the composite sketch, especially to capture his most defining features, certainly his nose and the combination of his eyes and his nose. Yeah, we can get a pretty good likeness, and certainly get some fair idea of what he would look like with various disguises.

CAFFERTY: Now this is -- it's all based on a software program that's called "Faces" that has to do with science of biometrics. Tell me a little bit about how that works.

SKRAPEC: Essentially, a person's picture is taken, and every feature on the face, the eyes, the nose, the eyebrows, even wrinkle lines, are given an alphanumeric code, what they call an "intercode." Ultimately, your face, then, is a the combination of numbers and letters, and think of it like a face print. So essentially, your picture can be taken and given a unique identifier, just -- much like a fingerprint, and we could then go far and, you know, encrypt that information on to credit cards and things like that. It could also be compared with existing databases that police have of mug shots, kind of wanted criminals -- wanted criminals, people who are on a watch list, for example, the INS. So, there are a number of different applications, essentially, when we get a composite picture and then could compare it to database or even passports. We can have people going through airports and swiping their passports and their picture, the authorized user of that passport, should come up on that passport it swipes.

So essentially, facial recognition can allow us to catch people who are using fake I.D.'s, and also we can compare them to mug shots that are in existing databases.

CAFFERTY: Is it realistic that a guy, under a barrage from American air power and ground assault from the Northern Alliance troops, and fighting the snows, and the Hindu Kush mountain range could have the time and the medical attention necessary to do this kind of drastic alteration on himself? I mean, is it realistic that he could actually look like this, even as early as now?

SKRAPEC: Oh, sure, and I don't think it really, ultimately, it requires such drastic changes. Indeed, cutting his hair, removal of the head wear would make a significant change in his outward appearance. Removal of the beard, removal of a mustache can really make a major difference in some individuals. Altering features, like adding, certainly, glasses, changing the head wear. Not just taking -- removing head wear, but changing the head wear. Of course, we haven't seen much of Osama bin Laden's hair. So, that in itself, just the removal of headgear would make a difference to us in terms of us being able to readily identify him just on sight.

CAFFERTY: Of course, the one thing that biometrics can't do is alter the fact that he's somewhere around six-five or six-six, so I suppose, even in disguise, if you look for tall guys, you'll probably begin to narrow the field a little bit. What's the future of this technology, if you take it into the future ten, 20 years, what do you see for the application of this down the road?

SKRAPEC: Well, I think that, you know, actually, it's pretty exciting, Jack. It's -- but it's a little scary too, because here in the United States, we're always concerned about invasion of privacy. That's something that we cherish and we want to protect, but we certainly received a wake up call on September the 11th. We have experienced what much of the rest of the world has been living with on a daily basis in terms of terrorist attacks. So, we're going to have to, probably, come to terms with giving up some of our rights to privacy in favor of protection for society. So I see that really there's a promising future for technology such as facial recognition, but it's going to cost us some of our personal freedom.

CAFFERTY: Yeah, and there's a great debate going on about that. Before we leave here, we have one other full-screen picture of a famous person. This is not Osama bin Laden, and we're going to put it up and let the viewers think about it for just a second. Who do you suppose that is? That's Secretary of State Colin Powell, and if you look at the eye -- I mean, I see what you're saying, there are certain defining features in everyone's face, and those don't change so much. And if you look at the eyes and stuff, you can sort of see that, in fact, it's Colin Powell. But those -- the changes in appearance of Osama bin Laden -- I mean, that's -- it's mind boggling how different, I guess, that he could actually look.

SKRAPEC: It really is. And indeed, you know, these are facial composites, and they are not intended to be exact replicas, so the idea is to stop you at border crossing, to stop you when you're going to be using a credit card fraudulently. It's essentially to initiate an investigation whereas otherwise you might just slip through the cracks.

CAFFERTY: It's fascinating stuff. I appreciate you being with us this morning. Thank you.

SKRAPEC: You're welcome.

CAFFERTY: Candice Skrapec is associate professor of criminology at California State University in Fresno, California.

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