Guess facial rec doesn't work for head shots.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Experts are sounding the alarm about techniques used to identify the assassin who tried to kill Donald Trump, saying the methods raise grave concerns about privacy.
The gunman, 'loner' Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was not carrying an ID, had no criminal record, nearly zero digital footprint and no friends, forcing the FBI to resort to DNA analysis to identity him.
As Kevin Rojek, the special agent-in-charge (SAIC) for the FBI's Pittsburgh field office, told reporters just hours after the shooting on Saturday, 'We're trying to run his DNA and get biometric confirmation.'
While the FBI declined to answer DailyMail.com's requests for details on how they did this DNA analysis, experts say it has often included scouring consumer genealogy databases like Ancestory.com and 23andMe — which store tens of millions of Americans' biometric data each.
And now, newer private DNA database companies have entered the market, firms that cater explicitly to the federal government and law enforcement as their clients.
SAIC Rojek added that the Bureau was also 'looking at photographs' to help ID the shooter, part of a multi-agency effort to put a name to the dead would-be assassin.
As experts told the DailyMail.com, a state-level facial recognition database held by Pennsylvania's Department of Motor Vehicles, fingerprints held as part routine criminal background checks by Crooks' employers and other government registries — while unnamed by the FBI — likely also played a role.
One parallel effort conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) 'completed an urgent trace' that ultimately led to the 'business records from a closed gun dealer,' according to an ATF statement.
That effort, a frantic, manual search through the closed gun shop's paper records, helped trace the rifle to the Crooks' father, according to a report by CNN.
'Results were provided to the FBI and Secret Service in less than 30 minutes that helped identify the shooter,' ATF reported a day after the FBI's DNA announcement.
Civil liberties advocates, however, noted that the increasing reliance on DNA databases by police not only raises privacy concerns, but the tactics have also led to false identifications and wrongful arrests, court records show.
An attorney who overturned one such case told DailyMail.com that these sprawling DNA databases can lead to misidentifications because today's crime scene forensics can recover DNA from extremely small and too often unrelated human debris.
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