Christ First Forum

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_bin_laden_fake_photos

SAN FRANCISCO – The images are bloody, grotesque and convincing: Osama bin Laden lies dead, the left side of his head blasted away. But the pictures are fakes.

Doctored photos purporting to show bin Laden's corpse rocketed around the world on television, online via social media and in print almost as soon as his death was announced.

The pictures have spread without regard for their origin or whether the images are real. Meanwhile, scammers have piggybacked on the popularity of the images and spiked supposed online links with computer viruses.

Newsrooms and the public have been left in the tough spot of deciding what to believe when software has made doctoring photographs easier than ever. And the hunger for visual evidence of bin Laden's death may only grow now that President Barack Obama has said the government's photos will remain classified.

"I don't think society tolerates the invisible anymore," said Fred Ritchin, a professor of photography at New York University who has written about digital technology undermining trust in the veracity of photographs. "Everything has to be imaged."

The photos on the Internet did not come from the operation that killed bin Laden, according to a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the mission was classified.

Still, the appetite for images remains. In perhaps the most widely distributed photo, a bloodied bin Laden appears to be missing his left eye, and he is grimacing as if he died in pain. The White House says bin Laden was shot above his left eye.

Reuters reported on its photography blog that the mouth, ear and beard in the picture exactly matched a photo the news agency had snapped of bin Laden at a news conference in 1998. The upper half of the face appears to be from a different corpse.

Another photo released on the website liveleak.com shows bin Laden lying on his back with a wound over one eye as a soldier with an American flag insignia on his shoulder stands over the body. The photo is in green and black, as if taken with a night vision lens.

The website has since retracted the photo, which liveleak.com indicated was made with a photo of bin Laden digitally stitched into a still from the 2001 movie Black Hawk Down.

Another picture, by far the most gruesome, shows an extremely bloody face that resembles bin Laden with most of the skull missing and brain visible.

Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth University who specializes in forensic photographic image analysis, examined the photo for The Associated Press and said it appeared altered.

"In today's world where even the cheapest cameras are a few megapixels in resolution, it doesn't make sense why such an important image would only be available at this very low resolution," Farid said. "From the perspective of photo tampering, however, smaller is better since it makes it harder to analyze."

The spread of fake photos and the ease of making them have forced news organizations to be more vigilant than ever.. . .(more)

I have no desire to see any photos of his death. I take no pleasure in his death. Many of people have taken to streets to celebrate his death. What is the differnce between them in their streets doing it when one of ours is dead? I will not find the joy in this in anyway. I will not sink into the level of them. We are CHRISTIANS!! Not mad animals!! We must do as Jesus would do. Would he not find sorrow in this mans death?? I must do as my spirit leads me. It doesnt lead me in the direction of joy for this mans death. I am so sorry my brothers and sisters if this upsets any of you. It is not my intent to do that. If you find joy in his death and need to see his photo to know that he is dead then that is what your spirit tells you. The spirit in me says otherwise.

I, personally, don't want to see pictures of his 'death' either,but it's a very sad day, when we have constant 'doubts' about our government's honestly...

Happen too fast after his 'birth certificate' was expose, and then, BOOM!