Boston Marathon Explosion Suspects Not Identified by Facial Recognition Software, Says Boston Police Chief

The killing and capture of the two brothers responsible for the bombings of the Boston Marathon last week were made possible through a combination of new technologies and old-fashioned detective work.

Investigators combed through hundreds of hours of surveillance videos, as well as images and home videos posted on social media to find the people who planted bombs in backpacks near the finish line of the race.

But one increasingly prevalent technology was no help in identifying the culprits: facial recognition software.

While crime dramas and procedural television shows often show investigators quickly running photos through a massive facial recognition database and receiving accurate matches, that hasn't yet been the case on any kind of large scale.

While the expectations are high, and systems have been deployed for years, a match -- particularly one that actually makes a difference in a case -- is a rare exception.

Much of the issue is that the technology is not yet advanced enough. Results vary widely, dropping precipitously if photos are profile shots or faces are obscured by clothing or sunglasses. Even smiling throws off the software.

Officials have gone to great lengths to compile facial recognition databases, much to the dismay of privacy advocates.

But in the Boston case, even that didn't seem to help. Both brothers existed in government databases.

"[Boston Police Chief Ed] Davis said he was told that facial-recognition software did not identify the men in the ball caps. The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs' images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver's license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation," the Washington Post writes.

Once the brother were identified as the bombers, the authorities had plenty of official photos on hand to distribute. They were known to officials, and their pictures were in government databases, but the software couldn't match them to the hundreds of images from the bombing.

It was the brothers' aunt that eventually identified them from photos.

Surely the technology will continue to advance, but in the meantime, manpower and lucky breaks make all the difference.