FORENSICS 149: ATTEMPTING CLARIFICATION IN VEIN
This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery stories who would like to enrich their stories by presenting their readers with a gift of extra detail. It might also be of general interest to many other readers.
Most readers probably remember Daniel Pearl, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. He was abducted on January 23, 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. While a captive, Daniel’s picture showing a gun pointed at his head was sent with demands that the United States free all Pakistani terror prisoners, end the US presence in Pakistan and allow a detained shipment of F-16 jet fighters to be delivered to Pakistan. Daniel was ultimately killed on February 1 and beheaded. His body was cut into ten pieces and buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi. His remains were found on May 16 and were ultimately returned to the United States for burial.
A senior operative for Al Queda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, grew up in Kuwait, but obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from an American university. Subsequently, he received military training in Pakistan and claimed to have briefly fought the Soviets. According to United States law enforcement, he had a small role in the first World Trade Center bombing in New York City on February 26, 1993. The bombing was intended to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, flattening them both and killing thousands of persons. That did not happen, but the blast did kill six persons and injure more than a thousand.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was believed to be the principal architect of the coordinated September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks using four commandeered passenger jets. Two of the jets were crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City A third jet was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth jet, which was on its way to Washington, D.C., crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to wrest control from the terrorists. These attacks reportedly caused 2,996 deaths and injured more than 6,000 persons.
Among his terrorist plots, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly described a plan to take control of ten aircraft. Nine were to crash into targets including those of the 9/11 attack, CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants and the tallest buildings in the states of Washington and California. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself was to land the tenth plane, kill all the adult male passengers and deliver a speech to the media denouncing the United States.
On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested by the Pakistanis in Rawalpindi. He was reportedly held in Pakistan for three days and then moved elsewhere by US officials. During a closed military hearing, he confessed to being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and many others. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confessions included the statement that “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.” Since he confessed to so many terrorist acts, and since he had been the recipient of 183 water boardings, his confessions were considered by many as being inflated if not completely false.
A three-minute, thirty-six-second videotape showing Daniel’s decapitation was released on February 21. 2002. It was titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The video shows the arms and hands of a masked person severing Daniel’s head. Stills showing his hands were made from the videotape and compared by the FBI and CIA to those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he had been captured on March 1, 2003. A bulging vein coursing across the back of a hand shown in the videotape was found to match a vein in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s hand.
Although vein matching is not presently considered to be absolute evidence, it is corroborative with other forensic evidence. Both the FBI and CIA reportedly sometimes use vein matching, formally referred to as vascular technology, to identify suspects. Vascular structures of individuals are believed to be unique. Vein patterns are obtained by recording (typically near infrared) light that penetrates skin and reacts with hemoglobin in blood to reveal a vein pattern. By identifying the vascular structure of a hand or finger of a suspect and recording it digitally, a template can be created that can be compared to a template of a known person.
In addition to being a step forward in forensics, vascular technology, has other useful applications. Critical hospital applications include error reduction and unconscious or uncommunicative patient identification. The chief of hospital operations at one medical center claims that vein patterns are 100 times more unique than fingerprints. Vein matching is also being used in the financial field and for such tasks as entry allowance and attendance recording. For hygienic purposes, a version of a vein matching device has been developed that requires no physical contact. An important advantage of vein matching is that it appears it would be extremely difficult to construct a fake representation of a vein pattern. Fingerprints do not have this advantage.
In response to increasing incidences of credit card fraud and of the illegal withdrawing of funds from their customer accounts, Japanese banks have begun to use biometric technology. A form of this is finger vein identification. A customer inserts a finger into a device that reveals the vein structure within the finger. The structure is compared with that of a customer of record to confirm the identity of the finger’s owner.
I can’t help wondering how long it will take for someone to develop a finger vein identification device that will trap the finger of an unauthorized person and summon security.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Finger vein patterns of each finger of each person are different.
It took until May 2002 to completely clear the site of the World Trade Center disaster.
To protect United States journalists around the world, President Obama enacted the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act on May 19, 2010.
This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery stories who would like to enrich their stories by presenting their readers with a gift of extra detail. It might also be of general interest to many other readers.
Most readers probably remember Daniel Pearl, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. He was abducted on January 23, 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. While a captive, Daniel’s picture showing a gun pointed at his head was sent with demands that the United States free all Pakistani terror prisoners, end the US presence in Pakistan and allow a detained shipment of F-16 jet fighters to be delivered to Pakistan. Daniel was ultimately killed on February 1 and beheaded. His body was cut into ten pieces and buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi. His remains were found on May 16 and were ultimately returned to the United States for burial.
A senior operative for Al Queda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, grew up in Kuwait, but obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from an American university. Subsequently, he received military training in Pakistan and claimed to have briefly fought the Soviets. According to United States law enforcement, he had a small role in the first World Trade Center bombing in New York City on February 26, 1993. The bombing was intended to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, flattening them both and killing thousands of persons. That did not happen, but the blast did kill six persons and injure more than a thousand.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was believed to be the principal architect of the coordinated September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks using four commandeered passenger jets. Two of the jets were crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City A third jet was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth jet, which was on its way to Washington, D.C., crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to wrest control from the terrorists. These attacks reportedly caused 2,996 deaths and injured more than 6,000 persons.
Among his terrorist plots, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly described a plan to take control of ten aircraft. Nine were to crash into targets including those of the 9/11 attack, CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants and the tallest buildings in the states of Washington and California. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself was to land the tenth plane, kill all the adult male passengers and deliver a speech to the media denouncing the United States.
On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested by the Pakistanis in Rawalpindi. He was reportedly held in Pakistan for three days and then moved elsewhere by US officials. During a closed military hearing, he confessed to being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and many others. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confessions included the statement that “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.” Since he confessed to so many terrorist acts, and since he had been the recipient of 183 water boardings, his confessions were considered by many as being inflated if not completely false.
A three-minute, thirty-six-second videotape showing Daniel’s decapitation was released on February 21. 2002. It was titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The video shows the arms and hands of a masked person severing Daniel’s head. Stills showing his hands were made from the videotape and compared by the FBI and CIA to those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he had been captured on March 1, 2003. A bulging vein coursing across the back of a hand shown in the videotape was found to match a vein in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s hand.
Although vein matching is not presently considered to be absolute evidence, it is corroborative with other forensic evidence. Both the FBI and CIA reportedly sometimes use vein matching, formally referred to as vascular technology, to identify suspects. Vascular structures of individuals are believed to be unique. Vein patterns are obtained by recording (typically near infrared) light that penetrates skin and reacts with hemoglobin in blood to reveal a vein pattern. By identifying the vascular structure of a hand or finger of a suspect and recording it digitally, a template can be created that can be compared to a template of a known person.
In addition to being a step forward in forensics, vascular technology, has other useful applications. Critical hospital applications include error reduction and unconscious or uncommunicative patient identification. The chief of hospital operations at one medical center claims that vein patterns are 100 times more unique than fingerprints. Vein matching is also being used in the financial field and for such tasks as entry allowance and attendance recording. For hygienic purposes, a version of a vein matching device has been developed that requires no physical contact. An important advantage of vein matching is that it appears it would be extremely difficult to construct a fake representation of a vein pattern. Fingerprints do not have this advantage.
In response to increasing incidences of credit card fraud and of the illegal withdrawing of funds from their customer accounts, Japanese banks have begun to use biometric technology. A form of this is finger vein identification. A customer inserts a finger into a device that reveals the vein structure within the finger. The structure is compared with that of a customer of record to confirm the identity of the finger’s owner.
I can’t help wondering how long it will take for someone to develop a finger vein identification device that will trap the finger of an unauthorized person and summon security.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Finger vein patterns of each finger of each person are different.
It took until May 2002 to completely clear the site of the World Trade Center disaster.
To protect United States journalists around the world, President Obama enacted the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act on May 19, 2010.