The Way Police Identified the <em>Capital Gazette</em> Shooter Was Totally Normal
A mass-shooting in Annapolis, Maryland, at the Capital Gazette yesterday killed five journalists, making it the most deadly domestic attack on the press since 9/11. Local police say a suspect in custody, Jarrod Ramos, appears to have acted alone and been motivated by retribution for a failed defamation lawsuit against the paper. As accounts of the shooting and its aftermath arrived, one detail stood out: The suspect was uncooperative after apprehension, and the county police used facial-recognition technology to identify him.
Some would celebrate the use any available technology to name an unidentified and uncooperative suspect caught in the act of a mass shooting, especially before the incident is clearly contained. But recently, complex surveillance technologies, like a service to law enforcement, have come under scrutiny. In addition, the mass-market success of DNA-collection data have made that technology’s surveillance power potential clear. This spring, the suspected Golden State Killer was arrested to Joseph James DeAngelo on the genealogy website GEDmatch.
