RUSSIA - Facial Recognition of Putin’s Crowd
Social media is awash with claims, repeated on news websites, that Russian President Vladimir Putin surrounded himself with actors for his New Year’s address and at previous events. But what’s the evidence?
We used facial recognition software to check some of these allegations.
The Russian president has a track record of posing at events where some of the attendees are not what they seem.
A BBC Russian investigation in 2020 found that some events presented as impromptu conversations with everyday people were actually filled with friendly local officials.
We’ve used facial recognition software to compare the face of the woman in the New Year picture with those in 2016 and 2017, producing low match results of 29% and 28% respectively.
Next, we compared the images from the events held in 2016 and 2017, which generated a 99.1% score, strongly indicating that these two are of the same person.
The woman at the New Year address has been named in Russian media as Anna Sergeevna Sidorenko, a captain and military doctor. Comparing her face at the event with an image taken from a video interview posted online by the Russian Isvestia newspaper gave a 99.5% match. Her name also appears on a members list of a Russian military regiment published by the Ukrainian intelligence services.
-www.bbc.com, 6 January 2023
Commentary
We have long noted that Revelation 13:14-15 predicts a manmade invention that could make judgments about people: “…that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”
Here we see manmade technology—namely, facial recognition software—able to quickly and accurately determine if the face of a person in different pictures is the same or not. A 75% match is considered a reasonable cutoff, so these 99.1% and 99.5% matches decisively indicate these are the same person in a way that is even more convincing than expert (human) testimony.
Interestingly, the widespread use of computer facial recognition algorithms at borders and other public locations, has made traditional espionage difficult for many intelligence agencies. Previously, they used false identity documents that appeared beyond suspicion, which allowed agents to move behind enemy lines under various covers. This is no longer possible once a face is tied to any identity, which could include something as benign as a family photo posted online. We are now seeing the actual implementation of the total control prophesied in the end times. -By J. Froese
Arno Froese is the executive director of Midnight Call Ministries and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed prophetic magazines Midnight Call and News From Israel. He has authored a number of well-received books, and has sponsored many prophecy conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. His extensive travels have contributed to his keen insight into Bible prophecy, as he sees it from an international perspective.
