Facial images, grabbed from videos uploaded on Parler, of alleged participants of the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol Hill protest showed up on a website claiming to help authorities in identifying the protesters.
The website, Faces of the Riot, claims its goal is to assist the FBI in the ongoing investigation of the deadly Jan. 6 protest, which resulted in at least five fatalities. The creators of the site, who declined to give their names, said their website includes almost 6,000 facial images grabbed from videos uploaded on Parler. The social media platform is popular with conservatives and allegedly is a haven for extremist and racist content. Parler went offline after Amazon's AWS terminated its website hosting contract, while Apple and Google removed the social media platform's app on their online stores.
A website designed to help identify individuals at the Capitol Hill riots quietly went live earlier this month, displaying facial images of people who allegedly participated https://t.co/C9fXRBxccU — CNET (@CNET) January 24, 2021
According to the creators of Faces of the Riot website, they grabbed the images from a Parler archive, which hackers created, by scraping video and image posts, along with location data, just before the site went offline. The creators then utilized an open-source facial detection application to extract images from approximately 827 videos posted on Parler from inside and outside of the US Capitol building. They then posted the facial images of alleged participants of the deadly Jan. 6 protest on Capitol Hill on the website to help the FBI identify the demonstrators.
Thousands Of People Involved
In an interview with CNET, an online media website, one of the creators claimed their purpose in setting up the Faces of the Riot website was to help the FBI identify demonstrators in the deadly Capitol Hill protest last Jan 6. The creator said that the facial images of people grabbed from videos uploaded on Parler represent real individuals that might have committed some crime. "Before this, everyone being held accountable was a famous politician or a notable figure, but there were thousands of other people there who also should be held accountable for this," the creator told CNET.
The design of the Faces of the Riot website is minimalist and shows a grid of facial images grabbed from videos uploaded on Parler, which looked like mugshots. Each of the images links to the original video showing what the person was doing on Jan. 6 during the deadly Capitol Hill protest. While the site discourages visitors from doing their own investigations, it does encourage them to share information with the FBI if they know the alleged participant shown on the image. The creators said this is their way of helping the authorities identify demonstrators.
Making It Easier
"We aim to make it easier to find tips to submit to the FBI, not for an average user to identify demonstrators, as that can get dangerous," one of the Faces of the Riot creators said. While each of the facial images displayed allegedly came from videos of the deadly Capitol Hill protest uploaded on Parler starting Jan. 6, the site's creators do not discount mistakes from happening, which is why they invite visitors to report images they might have included by mistake so they can delete them. "We've spent about 5 hours manually removing pictures of children and non-rioters before publishing the database," the website's creators said.
