Hidden Article

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Faked photos of 7/7 bombers?

Geoff | 25.07.2005 16:17 | London

A friend just emailed me about this photo. It does appear to have been edited. If so, it either could have serious implications for the identities of the bombers, or could jsut be piece of faked evidence used to accuse men who really are guilty. You decide.

Metropolitan Police handout photo

Was a "Bomber" Superimposed onto Metropolitan Police Surveillance Camera Photo?

Below is a CCTV image circulated by the Metropolitan Police.

As Peter Kofod wrote,"Take a look at this photo of the four alleged London bombers."

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050724/photos_pl_afp/050724214150_vesdc65b_photo1

"At first, (almost) everything looks fine, but look closer... look at the guy with the white hat... check out his left arm (HIS left arm).... the lower of the rails of the railing is IN FRONT of his left arm... where of course it shouldn't be! I'm NO image specialist, but this sure looks ridiculous. I'd say it´s a fake."

The CLG has also inspected this image. "The white-hatted man was apparently superimposed onto the photo. Not only is his arm 'behind' a railing that is supposedly several feet behind HIM, but also, upon magnification in Photoshop, part of the bar actually goes into his head. This was 'touched-up,' but pixels of his head mix unmistakably with pixels from the railing." --Michael Rectenwald.

-------------
Metropolitan Police handout photo shows a CCTV image of (L-R:) Hasib Hussain, Germaine Lindsay (dark cap), Mohammed Sidique Khan (light cap) and Shahzad Tanweer, the four suspected London suicide bombers, arriving at Luton train station at 07:21 on July 07. Americans are weighing the merits of an all-seeing network of 24-hour-a-day security cameras similar to the system which has aided Britain's recent terror investigations.(AFP/HO/File)

Geoff
Homepage: http://www.legitgov.org/cctv_image_of_uk_suspects_240705.html

Comments

Hide the following 24 comments

not an image expert....

25.07.2005 16:49

If you look very carefully you can see a fifth bomber.

I'm astounded to hear that your not an image expert from your brilliant use of photoshop. The fakers went to all the trouble of putting in the guys reflection in the windows behind, in the water at the bomber's feet and forgot to put in one of the blokes left arm! Duh these image fakers ought to be shot for down right incompetance! Blurred pixels in the image, the whole bloody thing is blurred, no wonder that bit is blurred too maybe they faked the whole thing from scratch. Those dastardly image fakers eh. Possibly its something to do with the resolution and means of compacting hours and hours of cctv footage into as small a memory size as possible.

rebound

Amateurs

Maybe the cops outsourced the photo editing job over to the "experts" at the Evening Standard:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/evening-standard-crowd.htm

Evening Standard

25.07.2005 17:07

Yeah it shouldn't be allowed that newspaper shit, specifically in that context. It should be noted though
that most of the tabloids did it for the 1,000,000 and more, anti war march as well, blurring and filling to get the 'right' impression with the wrong picture. Editors just trying to get the impression they want to sell, although completely wrong, it's hardly a big secret uncovered now is it.

Reflections

25.07.2005 17:09

"The fakers went to all the trouble of putting in the guys reflection in the windows behind, in the water at the bomber's feet..."

No, look again: there's no reflection at the feet of the bloke in the white hat.
And doing the back reflection would have been easy, a simple copy & paste & smudge.

"Possibly its something to do with the resolution and means of compacting hours and hours of cctv footage into as small a memory size as possible."

Please explain: what would resolution and compression have to do with one of the bars appearing in front of Mr. White-Hat's arm?

March?

25.07.2005 17:12

"most of the tabloids did it for the 1,000,000 and more, anti war march as well"

I don't remember seeing that: which tabloids did that? Can you point me at some examples please?

Thanks,

RETURN OF THE "POD PEOPLE"

25.07.2005 17:28

RETURN OF THE "POD PEOPLE"

Okay, the same folks who brought you the "no plane at Pentagon" and "pods on the WTC planes" hoaxes are at it again. I wasn't going to waste time on this, but it seems like a lot of people are getting suckered with this one, so here goes.

This photo is being sent around the net as proof of video fakery by the London authorities.

The purpose of this nonsense is to drag people's attention away from the innocent man shot down by the British authorities, to trick the blogs into making a silly claim that the mainstream media can then use to ridicule any and all doubts about the official story, and to trick the bloggers into wasting time and resources on a pointless minutia, while ignoring Rove-gate and the Downing Street Memos.

Images were altered, but this isn't one of them.

Who was the shooter?

Don't Fall for the PsyOps
Homepage: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/podpeopletwo.html

who knows...

25.07.2005 17:29

I suspect it's not faked... but who knows...

One thing I don't understand is why they have only released 5 still images -- all these caps are from CCTV, why haven't they released moving images of these suspects? I'd have thought it was in their interests to do this -- people can recognise other by their gait...

The lack of more footage is more of a weird thing -- they must have loads more footage, why hasn't it been released?

tired

Take a third look.

25.07.2005 17:43

His arm bends above the fence line behind the foreground guys head. There is a black object behind the fence, possibly an attached sign. Someone go to Luton and photograph the area, you will see an object behind the railing. It is an optical illusion.

Megatron

quality & quantity

25.07.2005 18:37

the resolution of the shot is too poor to tell what is going on there. It looks to me as though there could be someone coming up/down the stairs behind the guy in question. But without higher res and more frames I personally wouldn't be able to say. But I would say you'd have to a complete photoshop *idiot* to make a composite that poor if that were to be an error.

magoo

upon reflection

25.07.2005 18:53

The obvious flaw in the idea of the image being fake is that for the guy's arm to be behind the railing would obviously have to be over the guy's arm. Anyone who has ever worked in digital/analogue montage will know that you'd have to lift the railings out the picture to make that mistake. There is no need to lift the railings into a seperate layer to get they guy in the picture. I could fix this in seconds without even having to resort to compostting.

In other words it makes no sense. If we could have more frames I'm 100% sure it'll make clear what the illusion is.

forensic magoo

In Agreement.

25.07.2005 20:43

I agree with Magoo. There is no way that a compositing error like this could occur with even the most amature photoshop artist. I enhanced the image in photoshop this afternoon (I used a plug-in which corrects 'mosquito noise' caused by compression). There is clearly an object behind the railing and this has caused the minor optical illusion. You can tell from the distinct difference in tone between the arm and the object just above the rail. I see no reason for this non-story to continue any further. I also question prison planet for running with the story. There have been several reports of photo manipulation these past weeks and I have seen no convincing evidence for any claims.

Weird...but actually...

25.07.2005 21:14

It's odd you know, because I completely saw the arm behind the railing until I started looking closely. What appears to be the guy's arm could very well be a fold in the rucksack of the chap in front of him.

artaud

Excellent, let's see your corrected photo

25.07.2005 21:32

Magoo, aka Rebound, Megatron, and all the other names used by the one bloke who spends hours trolling here.

What a load of bollocks you do talk about "distinct differences in tone", "would have to lift the railings out of the photo to make the mistake", "clearly an object above the rail", blah blah.

Enough agreeing with yourself. Show us your "enhanced image" then, so we can all see this "minor optical illusion" of yours. It should take you only seconds, right, like you said?

Positron

Ach away

25.07.2005 22:07

"Magoo, aka Rebound, Megatron, and all the other names used by the one bloke who spends hours trolling here"

This argument is trotted out endlessly whenever a stack of people all gang up on an unproven point, incredible assumption, or poorly developed hypothesis. Its not exactly a convincing response, I have to say.

There are some wild theories circulating, most of which seem to centre on some sort of grand security service scheme (I'll avoid the c word). Planning would have to be immaculate, the implementation flawless. And yet some people think they'd bollox up a simple photo most of us could do better ourselves in Photoshop....I mean, come on!

Paranoid Pete

25.07.2005 22:19

I think the problem is that when you have a crepuscular light source (dawn/dusk) you get this homogenous blue wash and a lack of any great colour contrast. Plus the low resolution of the image doesn't help tonal gradation much.

Like someone said, if someone lives nearby, a shot of the entrance would help. Though they'll need to get high up to get near the angle of the CCTV.

I reack the guys arm is bent and foreshorted (orange) and there is a shadow or something on the stairs behind the ralings (green)... the painted part of the stairs: yellow.

one possibility why the trolls are troubled tonight

25.07.2005 22:37

this is perhaps the tip of the iceberg. I have spoken now to a wide spectrum of people, and most of them are sure that they have seen the footage whch indeed solved the case. I mean the CCtv moving images which are alleged to show the four young men smiling and chatting as if everything was OK. This at the busiest time of the morning where this alleged footage must presumably track the four young Muslim men from arrival to getting on their trains. Look how many cameras there are.
So more people are beginning to think we may never see this compelling evidence. Some people are convinced. Anyway I said to this journalist hanging around with a mainland camera crew why don't you ask the police why no Kings Cross footage. His reply "The police are not taking questions"

This is major. So far no evidence has been offered placing the four young Muslim men at the crime scene i.e. at or near a London tube.

So............we are waiting.

weegee

a quick fix

25.07.2005 23:04

as per request

I think it wasn't faked

25.07.2005 23:10

I have to agree that this isn't a fake.

Yes, you'd have to have copied the railing's image and then pasted them back over the image of the "bomber"'s arm.

I think it's a combination of the video blurring into the white part of the guy in the foreground's backpack, and the dark background being indistinguishable from the colour of the "white hat" bomber's arm.

On the other hand, what I think's more suspicious is the way the video of the railing also blurs into his head. Having used photoshop for montage once or twice I'd say that perhaps if the original image of this white hat guy came from a picture with different lighting conditions etc., perhaps he could have been inserted with some transparency to make him look "native" to the image, hence the blurring effect. If it was faked, the incompetence could be explained by the pressure of deadlines?

The camera might not have taken full motion video either - in public places many just take intermittent snapshots - so can't wait for proof in the form full motion video.

anon

Blimey, it was Aled Jones that did it!

25.07.2005 23:57

A friend of mine at Bell Labs ran the image through some forensic alogrythms and lo and behold the original image has been revealed. Aled Jones of piddleplanet.con is behind the whole conspiracy!

Do not attempt to read this ...

26.07.2005 08:21

... there are simply to many unanswered questions ...

... it could harm you ...

... thanks imc volunteers ...

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/07/319547.html

I feel safer.

jackslucid
mail e-mail: jackslucid@hotmail.com

Positron? He's not one of the decepticons?

26.07.2005 08:43

I am not Magoo, nor am I a troll. I think Magoo has been spot on and very positive in this thread. He has shown beyond all doubt that this is an optical illusion in the image. I am beginning to doubt that he is a troll. Keep it up Magoo.
The plug in to remove 'mosquito noise' or compression artifacts is available from here;

http://www.algolith.com/index.php?id=algosuite

It is stupidly expensive but this is not a product endorsement. And before someone points out the glaringly obvious, yes I know it doesn't run in photoshop, I use aftereffects and photoshop together all day long.

This is absurd

26.07.2005 11:25

The image is a frame taken from a video surveillance camera. It is grainy, with poor colour and contrast and a ghost image is clearly present.

1. The faint image of the railing passing in front of the person's head is a ghost image on the video picture.

2. There is a dark panel behind the railings - appears to be smoked glass - and you can see a reflection of the rear of the person in it. The person's body is at a 45 degree angle to the camera, largely obscured by the man in front - the dark outline of the smoked glass panel gives the impression that the person's arm is hanging straight down (it is not).

Mr Baldingfast

anomalies

26.07.2005 16:10

i still do not understand why in the original image the white-capped guy's arm is behind the rail and why a line of pale blue crosses his head.

none of the troll has explained those 2 anomalies away.

furthermore:

why don't the blair thugs show us the 4 on cam INSIDE the subway?
waitin' for the train?
on the train carriages?

could it be that's because those 4 alleged people have NOTHING to do with the bombings (or alleged bombings,since they didn't even show us the trains or corpses) and it's blair's work instead?

state terror

fuck me. we are surrounded

27.07.2005 09:12

by dickheads and facists ...

... do not read this thread either, it might be damaging to ...

... indymedia ...

... they do not want to upset those in power to much - still, at least this is not a free speech site.