For six years, man who refuses to identify himself has held in a Canadian prison

For six years, man who refuses to identify himself has held in a Canadian prison(nationalpost.com)

47 points by ductionist 6 years ago | 58 comments

> Police in Britain, meanwhile, said a fingerprint check came back positive for the name Bouon Emmanuel Febile, a citizen of Cameroon. Any elation at a breakthrough was muted by a follow up cable from London: It was also positive for a different citizen of Cameroon, a citizen of Haiti, and a man of unknown citizenship.

Err, does this cast doubt on the reliability of fingerprint evidence?

The term "unique" is widely used in conjunction with fingerprints.

shakna 6 years ago | |

> Err, does this cast doubt on the reliability of fingerprint evidence?

This isn't really news, though not well publicised in mainstream media.

Fingerprinting isn't really "unique" enough to identify an individual from a very large number of suspects. It is good enough to help identify one suspect from a small pool. (And as soon as you run it against a large criminal database, you've opened yourself up to risking misidentification).

There have been several wrongful convictions based on fingerprint data [0] that were later overruled.

Fingerprinting has been accepted as scientifically accurate, but that hasn't really been verified by studies in the real world. [1][2]

[0] https://www.bu.edu/sjmag/scimag2005/opinion/fingerprints.htm

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093498/

[2] https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=458960

jmkni 6 years ago | | |

I bet somebody will make an app at some point to collect everybody's fingerprint, under the guise of finding your "fingerprint buddy" or something.

suresh70 6 years ago | |

Fingerprints are a very feeble form of biometrics. India's, Aadhar - A biometric-based ID system that primarily uses fingerprints is the best case study to understand this. Fingerprints, like every other human organ, are subject to wear and tear, this combined with probabilistic algorithms to find a match for a given set of fingerprints makes it a fragile system for "unique" identification.

zcrackerz 6 years ago | | |

It's reasonable for casual biometrics, such as a phone unlock, where the likelihood of someone with a match trying to use your phone is remote. Many people will choose the same password or PIN, for example, but of course you can't change your fingerprint on a whim.

zcrackerz 6 years ago | |

In the presence of other evidence, it's definitely useful to narrow down to reasonable doubt territory. Even DNA isn't unique, in the case of twins, but is still used all the time.

adrianN 6 years ago | | |

Not only twins show the same DNA evidence. Cheap methods for DNA fingerprinting as used in criminal investigations have nonneglibile error bars.

pbhjpbhj 6 years ago | |

The fingerprints could be matched, but when he was picked up be gave false IDs that were recorded against those prints.

Some quirk meant they weren't initially matched (they took prints, but didn't run a match at that point in time).

sundayedition 6 years ago | | |

Exactly. The article doesn't clarify whether the prints matched multiple people, or the man had given false names and info to multiple countries/systems which might never have been cross-referenced before

One could give false info to Border Patrol and county or state police here in the US and not be caught in certain circumstances. Especially if we're talking about encounters going back a few years or more.

Needs more info

oceanghost 6 years ago | |

I did some basic research on fingerprints 15 years ago.

Fingerprints have a "birthday problem." The metrics cluster around certain values because fingerprints ARE NOT RANDOM. This is why your gym likely takes your fingerprint and your phone number for access.

Same with DNA actually. There are many, many humans whose DNA appears to be the same to our primitive tests.

You will run into this problem anytime you assume the underlying data is distributed well, but it is not, actually.

jacobush 6 years ago | |

If you want to really see behind the matrix, look for "secondary classification". Scary stuff what evidence people can be convicted based upon.

perlgeek 6 years ago |

It's fun to speculate why somebody would behave this way.

A few things I could imagine:

* he fears being treated worse if his identity is found out (like an extradition to the US where he could face capital punishment, or detainment by another power that would treat him worse)

* he has a fundamental distrust of authorities that makes him somehow behave that way

* he has serious mental health issues (the article doesn't mention any psychological assessment)

Given his history of fraud, I'd tend toward the first idea, but who knows?

Any other ideas?

keiferski 6 years ago |

The courts have designated the man “the Unknown Person” and he has been behind bars for more than six years because officials don’t know who he is. This puts him in a bizarre state of limbo: Until Canadian officials know his identity and nationality, they cannot deport him; until they can deport him, they don’t want to release him.

The headline is clickbait and I have flagged it. He was arrested for a crime and refuses to identify himself, isn’t a Canadian citizen, and the police haven’t had luck figuring out his identity. They can’t deport him and they can’t just release him if he arrived illegally. This is all in the article.

I don’t know what else one could expect the police to do. It’s certainly an odd Kafkesque situation, but he doesn’t seem to want to get out of it.

keiferski 6 years ago |

I’ve always wondered if the world would benefit from a “Freeport” type city/country. No borders, minimal government, no identity documents. Places like this existed in the past; America itself was essentially a “fresh start” country for a good portion of its existence. If such a place existed today, the Canadian government could just put him on a one-way flight there.

But I feel like today, it would probably just end up as a crime haven. I can see far-flung space colonies fulfilling this role if/once space travel really kicks off. An interesting thought experiment, at least.

aliswe 6 years ago | |

Svalbard?

keiferski 6 years ago | | |

Probably the closest thing to it, but it’s still functionally under the authority of Norway.

pbhjpbhj 6 years ago |

This raises an interesting question for me, can we use biometric data to establish country (ie geographic region) of origin, in the general case?

Hair composition, dental treatments, inoculation marks, fingernails, faeces, blood .. obviously some of these are short term indicators.

How good of a probability can we get to, how tightly can we pinpoint someone geographically?

nradov 6 years ago | |

No in general it's not possible. There are a few isolated tribes where this might work, but the rest of humanity is too mixed and varied. The best you can do is a rough probability.

jmpman 6 years ago |

Why don’t they just find the other three people with similar fingerprints. Confirm they exist, and call it a day.

gpvos 6 years ago |

The article is from May 2019 and says he asked for a meeting "next Wednesday". Any news about that?

gpvos 6 years ago | |

Looks like it's unlikely that any more news will be forthcoming: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/bizarre-case-of-unknown-perso...

RickJWagner 6 years ago |

This would make an interesting movie, once we learn the whole truth.

winter_blue 6 years ago |

In the US, there is an effective limit of 6 months on the detention/incarceration of people whose nationality cannot be determined (or who are stateless). They are protected by two Supreme Court rulings: Zadvydas v. Davis (2001)[1] and Clark v. Martinez (2005)[2].

Although, right now, the conservative majority Supreme Court is in the process of slowing rolling back these protections, taking us to a darker period. With Jennings v. Rodriguez[3], asylum seekers can effectively be imprisoned indefinitely without even an opportunity for a bond hearing (not actual release, but even the opportunity to seek one) while their asylum (or other immigration) case is pending.

Conservatives Supreme Court justices have in the past, during oral hearings, spoken from the bench, about their contempt for Zadvydas v. Davis. It’s uncertain how long these basic human rights protections will survive.

[1] Zadvydas v. Davis: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2000/99-7791 ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadvydas_v._Davis

[2] Clark v. Martinez: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2004/03-878 ; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_v._Martinez

[3] Jennings v. Rodriguez: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/15-1204 ; https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/jennings-v-rodri...

romaaeterna 6 years ago | |

To give the conservative perspective: Part of the problem is that the Liberal abuse of asylum provisions has created human trafficking chains of human misery to both America and Europe, with rape/torture/death being the norm in these human movements. Beyond that, the mass migration leads to tremendous political and economic issues in the target countries, disproportionately affecting the poorest. The classic liberal position has been to resist these flows for that reason, while conservatives have been happy to overlook the human exploitation factors in order reap the benefits of cheap labor for the elite.

thbr99 6 years ago |

With illegal border crossing happening everyday at Roxham border, cases like these are bound to happen even more costing Canadian taxpayer $$$.

alluro2 6 years ago | |

Let me guess - you think a wall should be built to prevent it, just with Canadian wild geese instead of alligators and snakes around it

thbr99 6 years ago | | |

Just fix the loop hole in safe third country agreement that's all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada–United_States_Safe_Th...

jaeh 6 years ago | |

he immigrated legally on a 10 day visa, there is no connection to illegal immigration here, why would you bring it up?

thbr99 6 years ago | | |

A visitor visa is not legal immigration.

I had to state the countries I visited for the past 10 years. Jobs I had for 10 years,purpose etc when I applied for a visa. CBSA also did background checks on me, called one of my employers for verification. I figured all these by access to information reports later on out of curiosity.

How did this guy get a pass with CBSA ?

sundayedition 6 years ago | | |

When you move to a new country with the intent to reside and don't follow the law in regards to entry, you're an illegal immigrant.

It doesn't matter that you were allowed in legally; per the law he was expected to depart and he did not.