Your multigazillion-dollar security budget at work:
A MOCKED-UP image of how Osama Bin Laden may look today has been withdrawn by the US State Department after the FBI admitted it was partly based on a photograph of a Spanish MP taken from the internet.
The Photofit image of an older, greying Al-Qaeda leader bore a striking resemblance to the left-wing politician Gaspar Llamazares, a member of Spain’s Communist party and a critic of the US “war on terror”… The FBI originally claimed it used “cutting edge” technology to come up with new images of terrorist suspects for the State Department’s Rewards for Justice website.
However, Ken Hoffman, an FBI spokesman, admitted yesterday that the agency had used a picture of Llamazares taken from Google Images to update the Photofit.
So the G in G-Man stands for Googling? The Spaniard isn’t happy about it, and who can blame him? Especially if an unmanned drone catches his eye.
In related news, passengers concerned about privacy issues arising from the intrusive “full-body scanners” now being installed at U.S. airports should relax. For the purposes of the homeland-security database, the TSA’s “cutting edge” technology will automatically paste the private parts of Silvio Berlusconi and randomly selected mistresses over your distinguishing characteristics.