The FBI used the photo of a Spanish politician to show how Osama Bin Laden might look like today. The politician, Gaspar Llamazares says he no longer feels safe and his life is in danger as his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster. He said the use of a real person for the mocked-up image was “shameless”. The FBI has admitted that one of their forensic artists had obtained certain facial features from a photograph on the internet. So this is how American intelligence agencies work!
Poor Mr Llamazares is now scared of travelling to the U.S. He is sure that he will be mistaken for Osama Bin Laden and could be shot.
“Bin Laden’s safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is,” he said, adding that he was considering taking legal action.
According to the FBI, however, “The forensic artist was not aware of the identity of the individual depicted in the photograph. The similarities between the photos were unintentional and inadvertent.” Below are photos of Osama Bin Laden (as he was in 2001), the FBI’s version of what he looks like today, and a photo of Mr Llamazares(right).
True artists don’t take direction, and it is thoughtless to play games with real people’s faces without the subject’s permission. Such power must be wielded with care. Conscience and responsibility required.
When I was fifteen or so I used to take portrait commissions in my mother’s bookshop. One day a guy brought me a girl’s high-school picture and asked me if I could draw her face on the body of a Playboy nude woman, fairly innocuous but a nude all the same. I said sure, and did it, got paid my $10 and forgot about it. Some weeks later an anxious middle-aged woman showed up with the drawing, which she had found in her horse-barn, and asked me if there was a real photograph like it. She relaxed when I explained how I drew it from two photographs. The man who had asked me to draw the picture was a stable-hand, the girl was the anxious woman’s daughter. The angry mother fired the stable-hand, and I learned to be more cautious in future with real people’s likenesses, and think beforehand about how I applied my skills.
@Hira Mir: You just admitted to commentating about extremism so what’s not true?
not true. I only speak against extremism becuase i want my country to be safe.