Federal law enforcement officials snared a fugitive wanted for child sex abuse and kidnapping and it was all thanks to a test run of a new facial-recognition software being deployed by the U.S. State Department.
The FBI was scanning Most Wanted images into the new system while the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), which is part of the state department, was using the software to test validity of passports.
The result was a hit on a fugitive on the loose for over a decade.
Neil Stammer, 47, was arrested and charged with child sex abuse and kidnapping in 1999 in New Mexico, according to reports. Stammer, who was said to be fluent in 10 languages, went on the run after being released on bond.
Stammer was said to have been teaching English and other languages to students in Nepal for eight years and made regular visits to the U.S. Embassy in Nepal to renew his passport.
"The Albuquerque Police Department is grateful for the hard work and perseverance of our federal law enforcement partners and the government of Nepal in locating this extremely dangerous fugitive," said Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden, Jr. "We can only hope that during his time as a fugitive that he did not commit similar terrible crimes on others."
While the FBI relied on the DSS' facial recognition software to bring Stammer to justice, the bureau plans to locate other fugitives using its own biometric tech. Elements of the FBI's Next Generation Identification system will be rolled out in installments over several year.
"The future of identification systems is currently progressing beyond the dependency of a unimodal (e.g., fingerprint) biometric identifier towards multimodal biometrics (i.e., voice, iris, facial, etc.)," stated the FBI on its website. "The NGI Program will advance the integration strategies and indexing of additional biometric data that will provide the framework for a future multimodal system that will facilitate biometric fusion identification techniques."
