Photos of James (Whitey) Bulger in 1984 from the F.B.I.
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and IAN LOVETT June 23, 2011
LOS ANGELES — James (Whitey) Bulger, a legendary Boston crime boss indicted in 19 murders and who is on the F.B.I.’s 10 Most Wanted list, was arrested by federal authorities Wednesday night in Santa Monica, ending an international manhunt that had gone on since Mr. Bulger disappeared nearly 16 years ago, the F.B.I. announced.
Mr. Bulger was arrested without incident at a private residence in Santa Monica along with his companion, Catherine Greig, who fled with him in 1995, the F.B.I. said. The arrest came after the F.B.I., stymied in its efforts to find Mr. Bulger, had doubled the reward for information leading to the arrest of Ms. Greig, to $100,000, and began broadcasting public service television advertisements on shows geared to women viewers, such as Dr. Oz, as part of an effort to find Mr. Bulger through Ms. Greig.
The case has long captivated Boston, while proving something of an embarrassment to the F.B.I. Mr. Bulger, 81, is a former F.B.I. informant who disappeared early in 1995 after a retired F.B.I. agent alerted him to an imminent indictment.
The arrest was first reported on the Web site of The Los Angeles Times. It was officially announced by Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s office in Boston, and Steven Martinez, the assistant director in charge in Los Angeles. They said the couple had been found based on a tip that resulted from the recent public attention to the case, presumably the information the F.B.I. had distributed about some distinctive habits of Ms. Greig, a dental hygienist.
Ms. Greig, they said, had had multiple plastic surgeries, got her teeth cleaned once a month, frequented beauty salons and loved dogs.
Mr. Bulger had proved elusive despite a $2 million award for his capture, the largest ever for a domestic target. He was an outsize figure in Boston lore, and there have been reported sightings of him over the years from all over the world.
Though Mr. Bulger and his crimes are well known in Boston, the authorities had struggled to raise his profile elsewhere in the nation. The new public service announcement that began airing Tuesday was meant to capture the attention of older women who watch daytime television and might have encountered Ms. Greig, 60, at a beauty salon or elsewhere in their daily lives.
At a Monday news conference in Boston, F.B.I. agents said the agency had bought 350 time slots in 14 cities to run the 30-second announcement. Those cities included San Francisco and San Diego but not Los Angeles, according to a news release.
“There is someone in the United States or elsewhere in the world who knows Catherine Greig as a neighbor, friend or co-worker,” Mr. DesLauriers said.
It was not the first time the F.B.I. mounted a publicity campaign focused on Ms. Greig. Last year, the agency bought advertisements in Plastic Surgery News and the American Dental Association newsletter, asking, “Have you treated this woman?”
When reporters asked on Monday if the F.B.I. was giving up on finding Mr. Bulger alive, Special Agent Richard Teahan, who led the Boston task force searching for him, said it was not.
“There is absolutely no fatigue factor whatsoever,” he said.
The last credible sighting of Mr. Bulger was in London in 2002, Mr. Teahan said at the news conference. He added, though, that there had been “multiple leads” out of California.
One tipster reported spotting Mr. Bulger watching the Boston gangster movie “The Departed” at a theater in San Diego in 2006, according to The Boston Globe. Another said they had seen Mr. Bulger and Ms. Greig at a beauty salon in Fountain Valley, Calif.
It is hard to overstate the role Mr. Bulger and his vanishing played in Boston culture and lore. People there learn his name and story in childhood and make a game of looking for him around town, especially in South Boston, the neighborhood where Mr. Bulger grew up and where his crime operation was based.
He was the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s mob boss character in the movie “The Departed.” And books on Mr. Bulger continue to be published, including a new one by Kevin Weeks, one of his former associates, called “Where’s Whitey?”
William Christie, a lawyer who represents the families of two of the people Mr. Bulger is charged with murdering, said his capture had brought them enormous relief.
“There was a great sense that he had gotten away with it and justice had been denied,” Mr. Christie said. “I don’t think it’s ever left their minds. At some point, they were resigned to the belief that he would never be caught.”
Mr. Christie represents relatives of Edward Brian Halloran, a Bulger associate who as driving home from a bar on Boston’s waterfront in 1982 when Bulger and an unidentified accomplice allegedly opened fire, killing them. He also represents the family of John McIntyre, a Quincy fisherman whom the authorities say was killed by Bulger and an associate in 1984.
The F.B.I.’s role in his disappearance is almost as legend here as Mr. Bulger himself. Recruited as an informant for the agency in the mid-1970s, Mr. Bulger developed a close relationship with the agent he worked most closely with, John Connolly, who is said to have turned a blind eye to Mr. Bulger’s criminal activities in exchange for information on the Italian Mafia in Boston.
Mr. Connolly, who later went to prison, warned Mr. Bulger in late 1994 of his impending arrest, prompting him to flee.
Abby Goodnough contributed reporting from Boston.
Wanted: Hygienist (and Her Gangster Pal)
By ABBY GOODNOUGH June 20, 2011
BOSTON — Catherine Greig, a former dental hygienist, is thin and blond with “well-kept teeth” — or at least she was before she went on the lam. Now the F.B.I. is hoping the public will provide more help finding her so it can solve a case that has stumped the agency and fixated Boston for years.
Ms. Greig is the longtime girlfriend of James (Whitey) Bulger, the city’s most infamous crime boss, who is on the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted list. Mr. Bulger fled with her in 1995 and has yet to be found, despite a $2 million reward. On Monday, the F.B.I. said it would more aggressively seek the public’s help in finding Ms. Greig, 60, hoping that she might lead them to Mr. Bulger, who is now 81.
The agency has doubled its reward for Ms. Greig’s capture to $100,000 and has created a public service announcement about her to run during “The View,” “The Dr. Oz Show” and other daytime television shows aimed at women.
“We are trying to reach a different audience that will produce new leads in the case,” said Special Agent Richard Teahan, who leads an F.B.I. task force that has searched for Mr. Bulger worldwide. “Greig has certain habits, characteristics and idiosyncrasies that are recognizable.”
They include having her teeth cleaned monthly before she fled. She also “loves dogs and all kinds of animals,” “likes to frequent beauty salons” and has “had multiple plastic surgeries,” Mr. Teahan said. The public service announcement includes a photo of the pair strolling with a black poodle.
The disappearance of Mr. Bulger, an F.B.I. informer who fled after a retired F.B.I. agent warned him of his imminent indictment, has always been a sore spot for the agency. He has been charged with committing 19 murders. His name and face are legend here but are less known outside New England.
Last year, the F.B.I. placed advertisements with Ms. Greig’s picture in Plastic Surgery News and the American Dental Association’s newsletter. As part of the new campaign, pictures of her and Mr. Bulger will be on billboards in Times Square.
Asked about a recent report in The Boston Herald that Mr. Bulger might have died and been cremated in Costa Rica, Mr. Teahan said the F.B.I. had “no verifiable information” on it.
Amid Privacy Fears, Police Across the Nation Will Roll Out Face-Recognizing iPhone Tech This Year
MORIS BI2
By Clay Dillow Posted 07.14.2011 at 10:45 am
A controversial piece of facial recognition technology (and a PopSci “Best of What’s New 2010” alum) is rolling out in police stations across the country this fall, and naturally not everyone is happy about it. The Mobile Offender Recognition and Identification System (MORIS) uses an augmented iPhone to snap pictures of faces, scan fingerprints, and even to image irises, and then combs through police databases looking for matching identities. This, understandably, has privacy and civil liberties advocates crying foul.
The MORIS device attaches to the back of an iPhone, adding roughly 1.75 inches to the thickness of the smartphone. Police officers armed with the tool can take a photo of a person’s face from about five feet away, or scan his or her iris from about six inches, and wirelessly beam that data to law enforcement databases elsewhere to look for a match. It can also perform remote fingerprint matching.
Similar biometric technology has been deployed by the U.S. military in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to confirm the identities of civilians entering military safe zones and to search for known insurgents at checkpoints. But rolling it out in the streets of the U.S. has plenty of people concerned with privacy and Constitutional issues.
The technology lives in a somewhat gray area of the law. It’s generally permissible to take a photo of anyone in a public space, but when a law enforcement agent does so--and especially when he or she then cross references it against a criminal database--that could constitute a search, and therefore should require a warrant.
It’s another one of those situations where technology has simply outpaced the law (you would think Ben Franklin of all people would’ve seen mobile facial recognition software coming). So while it would be nice to turn to legal precedent here, there simply is none.
Nonetheless, BI2 has deals with about 40 agencies nationwide to deliver about 1,000 of the devices starting in September. From a law enforcement standpoint, police officers seem to like it. It’s a technology that lets them get to the bottom of a situation quickly. Moreover, in the technology’s defense, it’s tough to use MORIS to abuse a person’s rights if an officer is not already in the process of abusing them.
In an interview with BI2’s chief executive Sean Mullin last year, he told PopSci that the responses of privacy groups and civil liberties advocates are entirely appropriate, but that he thinks the technology passes legal muster. The facial recognition technology requires a frontal facial image taken from close proximity, he says--in other words, it requires consent. Iris scans are practically impossible without the subject’s cooperation, as are fingerprint scans. Besides, the alternative when a police officer can’t confirm a suspect’s identity is generally a trip downtown to sort it out. MORIS simplifies that process.
Whether or not that’s enough to satisfy the privacy rights crowd--and the law--remains to be seen. How this kind of technology is treated by the law now will set the precedent for when the technology becomes more robust--and perhaps more long-range, more surreptitious, and potentially more “Big Brother.”
I am grateful to Michael Ham, of the Later On [ http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/no-reason-to-feel-paranoid-nosiree/ ] site, for a tip about an amazing photographic site that makes one consequence of technology far more vivid to me than it had been before. If you haven't yet seen it, please follow along.
The technology in question starts with "gigapixel [ http://www.gigapixel.com/ ]" photography. Gigapixel photos are giant panoramas that themselves consist of hundreds of component mega-pixel digital shots. This means that you can begin with, say, a distant view of London or Seville or San Francisco -- and then keep zooming in until you are looking at individual buildings, cars, street signs, people. It's the effect we've come to take for granted with Google Earth, but with much greater close-in photographic clarity.
When you combine that with better and better automated systems of matching faces to real identities, plus human-run social-network tagging systems, what do you have? The result is something familiar in dystopian sci-fi novels from 1984 onward but until now not part of real life: the impending extinction of the "faceless crowd" and removal of any mask of anonymity as we go about our daily affairs.
And here is a zoomed-in bit from near the very back of the crowd, so far away in the shot above that the masses of people are just a blur. Up close, the people at the back look like this. You can imagine how ones nearer in look:
Maybe we'll all start wearing bandanas and hoodies when out in public, following the lead of the recent rioters in London (where monitoring cameras are already everywhere)? More to think about later, but for now the site [ http://www.gigapixel.com/image/gigapan-canucks-g7.html ] is worth trying yourself.
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