The U.S. forces who killed Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound were more than technical marksman . Some of them were forensics experts as well , using sophisticated prick to ensure that they got the correct man .
talk at a White House briefing , counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said he had “ 99 percent ” certainty the commando squad killed bin Laden , thanks to “ facial recognition , [ his ] height , [ and ] an initial DNA psychoanalysis . ”
The initial desoxyribonucleic acid analysis appears to have been done far from the shot , by “ CIA and other specializer in the intelligence community ” on Monday , accord to an intelligence official who briefed Pentagon newsman , and it returned a “ virtually 100 per centum deoxyribonucleic acid mates . ”

Press report say the DNA used to key bin Laden may have come from one of his sis , who allegedlydied at Boston ’s Massachusetts General Hospital . ( However , hospital spokeswoman Katie Marquedant would n’t confirm this , telling Danger Room , “ We have no selective information at all . ” )
But grant to a senior Defense Department functionary , hazard are they used the tool pictured above to verify his biometric data . The machine is called a Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit , or SEEK , a handheld biometrics record-keeper that take iris scans , fingerprints and facial scans and port them back to an FBI database in West Virginia in sec .
“ We ’ve always said this is about more than finding hoi polloi in a crowd , ” state the senior denial official , who requested anonymity to blab about the CSI - corresponding gear that Special Operations Forces hold . The latest version , developed by a company calledCrossmatch , is known as SEEK II , and it come out last year . It weighs less than 4 pounds , and its ability to station information back to the FBI database is “ wham - eruption , ” even from low - connectivity area .

To pull that off , SEEK II has built - in wireless capability and optional 3 gravitational constant to push or pull biometric info from the database . If that does n’t exploit , USB ports connect SEEK to other data processor . The gimmick runs on Windows XP .
SEEK II does n’t have a touchscreen , so troop or their FBI partners will still call for to key in entropy the previous fashioned means . But its fingerprint sensors are more tender , allowing troops to run down in both pressed and rolled mark for a fuller ambit of whom they ’re place . grant to the defense functionary , it took “ probably a million , 2 million ” dollars to develop .
The U.S. military hasother biometric toolsthat it ’s put to employment in Iraq and Afghanistan to describe guerrilla and distinguish them from civilians . One ’s call the Biometrics Automated Toolset , or BATS . Another ’s called the Handheld Interagency Identification Detection System , or HIIDE .

Those do n’t look to be state - of - the - art any longer . “ This is good than BATS or HIIDE . We did that early on , ” the defense official said . “ It ’s faster , it can blame up more information , better than the iris scan , and get it into the organization . ”
For one affair , the connection speed with SEEK II is a luck better , the functionary said . And it syncs up with a much bragging database .
BATS and HIIDE feed into a military database call theAutomated Biometric Information System . ABIS contain political detainee selective information only from the country in which U.S. forces are operating .

SEEK II , on the other hand , feeds into an FBI database with far more fingerprint and biometric information than the military possesses , the defense official say . Plus , the machine has its own “ local database , ” give up operators to store specific biometric data on the twist if they screw who they ’re looking for .
But for all you ’re hearing now about facial acknowledgment , the functionary tell , the old - fashioned fingerprint remain more reliable . SEEK has facial - recognition capability , but it ’s still somewhat light . “ We ’ve evolved case recognition very significantly , but it ’s still not as good as people would wish you to believe , ” the functionary said . Several factors still mess up up incontrovertible recognition : “ dissimilar slant , unlike lighting , a heap of false piece . ”
It was n’t long ago that Special Operations Forces did n’t have access to much biometric data point of any sort . “ Matthew Alexander ” is a pseudonym for one of the members of a especial mission unit of measurement that hunted and ultimately toss off the leader of al - Qaida in Iraq , Abu Musab al - Zarqawi , in 2006 .

“ I ’m mould for an elect undertaking force , ” Alexander recalled . “ We ’re hypothesize to have the good of everything . But we had just then started get in people ’s biometric data . We were basically creating this database in ‘ 06 , three year into the warfare . ”
Facial acknowledgment was a far - off pipe dream . All of this had real upshot for the manhunt .
“ One bozo take in us , ” he remembered . “ He gave us a phony name . It was not till an psychoanalyst found a photograph of him on old slides [ that we watch ] he was an operation commandant for northern Iraq . ”

But before the SEALs can affirm the information they discover during their raids , they ’ve got to finish the foray first . The scene of a firefight like the one that killed bin Laden is n’t the place for agree information , give way the insecurity of the locations where troops are fighting . To machinate them for what they ’re getting into , elite troop also have a tool calledForward Looking Infrared , or FLIR .
A more mature technology than SEEK , the optic - mounted FLIR organization gives troops a sense of where their foe are inside a chemical compound by tracking their heat detector . It ’s not that sensitive – “ it ca n’t see through a wall , ” the defence reaction official said – but it provides a glimpse of where in an open space someone might be , using his heat signature . ( The Army ’s presently working on a twist calledSense Through The Wall , which , as its name suggests , has a advanced sensor to acquire where mass are on the other side of structures that are too impenetrable for heat scanning . )
If all of this seems like the Joint Special Operations Command is act like a federal SWAT squad , that ’s not by accident . These Clarence Shepard Day Jr. , peculiar operations team “ have FBI representation on them , ” said Ali Soufan , a former FBI counterterrorism agent who hound al - Qaida before and after 9/11 . The FBI might not go on raid with the commando , but back at the floor , “ they do the fingerprints , they can do the desoxyribonucleic acid [ psychoanalysis ] and gather the grounds . ”

That was something Alexander saw firsthand . “ It ’s unquestionably moving more toward constabulary work , ” he say , because legal philosophy enforcement has more experience painstakingly collecting , analyzing and tracing grounds to get the right-hand human race .
SEEK II represents an unlikely mindmeld – or , at least , fingerprintmeld – between the door - kicker at JSOC and the FBI . But the nonsuch of this newfangled influence now has global prestige , as the commando just took down the FBI ’s most - wanted terrorist .
Photo : Crossmatch

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