Scientists have made geoprofil anonymous Banksy graffiti Bashny.Net

Three years ago, experts have proven that identify a particular person among the 1, 5 million mobile phone users can be all on four points in time and space. Such points (eg, home - work - shop - bar) are unique to each person, much like a fingerprint

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The latest victim was the English scientific deanonimizatsii, underground artist Banksy street art, which for twenty years been able to hide his identity and evade police. It is called the most famous modern artist in the UK.

Michael Hauge (Michelle Hauge) from the University College of London Queen Mary and colleagues used a statistical technique "geographic profiling", something similar to the technique deanonimizatsii cellular subscribers mentioned above.

It is believed that the technique of geographic profiling invented a former police officer, Professor Kim Rossmo (Kim Rossmo), co-author of the research. Initially, it was used to search for a serial killer who commit crimes around some "anchor" point - usually their home or place of work

. Later adapted technique for the study of the spread of viral infections. The computer program, having received information about the infected citizens, can a few minutes to determine the source of the epidemic.

The researchers studied the spatial structure of Banksy street work in Bristol and London. They were able to prove the theory that in 2008 put forward the author of a journalistic investigation of the newspaper Mail on Sunday, which is hidden under the pseudonym of Banksy artist Robin Gunning (Robin Gunningham).

The authors of the new study gathered accurate GPS-coordinates of the 140 works of Banksy, the famous open source.



They recorded for comparison coordinates Ganningema apartments in London and Bristol, as well as the coordinates of the apartment of his girlfriend Jaime Eastham, with whom he lived in 2004-2005, and another girl (now wife) Joy Millward, the coordinates of the base of football club The Plough, for which Gunning played, and two football fields, where the club played.

Data processed by the Dirichlet distribution model (Dirichlet process mixture, DPM), which is ideal for clustering with an unknown number of clusters. In processing the "crime scenes" are split into clusters. It is assumed that each cluster a single source.

For a software package used Rgeoprofile, written in R. The clustering software parameters set the radius of 900 meters - the typical maximum distance traveled by the offender in an urban setting. With these settings, researchers have assumed that about 95% of all work by Banksy are located within 2 km around the source.

The result of the study: the London geoprofile Banksy two of the three alleged "anchor" locations included in the top 10 geoprofilya

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London geoprofil

In Bristol - two of the four

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Bristol geoprofil

In London geoprofilya peak is 500 meters away from the wife of the former apartment Ganningema and close to the apartment where he lived with his girlfriend. Of course, such a result can not be considered proof that Banksy - is Gunning, but Geoprofi definitely confirm this theory

. The authors hope that the statistical method geoprofilirovaniya useful to identify potential terrorists who are yet engaged in drawing graffiti and putting up anti-government leaflets.

The scientific article about Banksy deanonimizatsii published in the Journal of Spatial Science.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/272168/