back to article Sun attempts to ID entire FA Cup Final crowd

The Sun has thrown its weight behind an attempt to ID everyone who was at Wembley for Saturday's FA Cup Final, and who were captured in an impressive 360° hi-res picture as they cheered on Manchester City and Stoke City. The Sun's 360 degree view of Wembley. Pic: Jeffrey Martin, 360Cities.net The paper says the "largest …

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  1. Jeremy 2
    Black Helicopters

    <title/>

    Fan: "**sniff** Sorry Boss, *cough* *splutter* I'm sick.... Can't make it today..."

    Boss: Oh, really.......

    1. John I'm only dancing
      Thumb Up

      Beat me too it

      I remember a story of someone who said they were too ill to work, unfortunately, the local rag ran a face in the crowd comp and there they were, ringed at the game..

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    This must be illegal...

    ...there are pictures of children in there.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nope...

      As long as the venue didn't have a no photography rule then there is no law broken.

      But they will be safe because they cannot be tagged, you have to be over 18 to be on facebook don't you....

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Coat

        incorrect....

        the venue could quite easy have a no photography rule, but if the venue authorised the photo then all is perfectly legal and above board.

        Even If they did not have authorisation from the venue to take photos, the only thing they could do is ask the photographer to leave.

        the only issue would be if they wanted to use the picture for commercial purposes. they may need (but not essential) a release form completing for each of the people featured in the picture, but I don't believe it it necessary for a crowd of people.

        and its 13 to have a facebook account... although a large % of under 13's have a account !!

        Mines the one with the camera in the pocket.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Legal

          Publishing the picture is almost certainly legal. What might be legally questionable is the idea of giving the identity of somebody in that picture without their permission.

    2. sollyatwell
      WTF?

      reply

      Anonymous Coward.......What are you on about? It is not illegal to take pictures of children.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Big Brother icon obligatory

    Anyone else slightly spooked by this, and where this could - potentially - go?

    1. Robert E A Harvey

      Well,

      Since I am unlikely ever to go to a football match except as dissosciated atoms long after my death, probably not.

      Would they do this for a performance of Lohengrin ? I might be in bother then.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      no

      no not really, "company takes photograph of crowd at public event" hardly shocking, mildly interesting to see people at a single moment in time. Could be worrying if you decided to throw a sickie and your company has people that will stare at these kinds of things, but then again, that's your own fault.

      CCTV is already everywhere, bank transactions are easily funnelled through intelligence services systems, ECRB checks are common place, our internet connections will soon be funnelled through intelligence services (and the police will use it for fishing and lobby groups will use it to justify their view of the world.)

      So am I worried about half decent photos of my ugly mug going into a sex shop one day? No, not really. Personally most normal people are entertained when they find a picture of themselves doing something on TV, in a DVD or on a website. It means you can go "hey look, there's me!!" something I and my friends often do on concert DVDs we get from Japan, "Hey that's my arm, isn't that You-Ann? olol you can hear me calling! Hey look it's your santa hat! Hey did you see the report about MM, you can see us as clear as day at the front of the crowd." "get in there"

    3. Britt Johnston
      Pirate

      Can't be a problem, as

      this paper is not part of the empire that hacks the phones of anyone with a face.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Big Brother

      Big brother

      "Anyone else slightly spooked by this, and where this could - potentially - go?"

      Yep, big time.

      Oh look here's a photograph of thousands and thousands of people, please identify yourself, your friends and tell us what your facebook accounts are pls k thnks.

      Oh, don't bother with your address, we can trace that from the facebook ip logs.

  4. jon 72
    Big Brother

    I wonder

    how many were on a sickie lol

    1. Sir Cosmo Bonsor

      It was a Saturday.

      letters

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Sir Cosmo Bonsor

        That fact that you don't work on saturday doesn't mean everybody gets saturday off.

  5. JDX Gold badge

    Can you feed it to Google?

    Google's picasa has face-recognition already; upload your photos and it identifies you and your friends. I wonder if it can be used to find your mates in this, since there's a good chance someone you know was there and it'd be nerdily fun to find them.

    1. waldo kitty
      Paris Hilton

      can google actually eat it?

      JDX> Google's picasa has face-recognition already; upload your photos and it identifies

      JDX> you and your friends.

      ummm... doesn't have to have a known picture of you already for it to work? ;)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Actually...

    - taking photos of children is illegal

    - taking photos of *anything* in London is illegal

    So this fails on both counts.

    1. Elmer Phud
      FAIL

      nope

      Fail

    2. Ojustaboo

      no law against taking pics of children

      As odd as it may seem, taking pictures of children is not at all illegal.

      I could walk down the street , see your children and take their pictures and am fully entitled to do so should I wish.

    3. Lee Dowling Silver badge

      Wrong and Wrong

      But that doesn't mean the police know that.

      There is no problem with taking photos of children (so long as it's "innocent") in a public place or in a venue you own, or even technically at a school play (but the school are free to eject you - however neither they or the police can demand that you delete your photos or anything else). People (including officers) who think otherwise are wrong. You just might have to spend an afternoon in your local nick to prove it.

      1. Graham Marsden
        Boffin

        I think some people...

        ... need to check the settings on their irony detectors...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      wrong...

      taking photographs of children is NOT illegal.

      I can sit outside the local playground snapping away photos of children all day if I want. Well, until a weekend bobby appears on the scene, quoting anti terror laws and whatever because somebody called the police.

      and taking photos in London is not illegal ether. You can be asked not to under curtain anti terror laws if a particular area has been declared as under threat, but even then, you can argue that you are only taking photos the same as what goggle street view cameras have already done.

      mines the one with the photographers rights card in the pocket to show the over zealous boys in blue if they want to give me hassle for street photography.

  7. LPF

    @Actually

    Taking photos of someone in a public place is not illegal , so you fail on both counts, plus an extra FAIL at life, just because you tried to be a smart arse and got it worng lol

    1. Jeremy 2
      Happy

      @@Actually

      Unless your post is a sarcasm fail?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        "Fail" wars...

        I FAIL the above FAIL war...:-)

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        I fail you...

        ...to infinitiy. Plus one.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Joke

          I can top that :)

          10 PRINT "Fail to the power of"

          20 PRINT "infinity to the power of"

          30 GOTO 20

          :)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Boffin

            BASIC? Yuck...

            .text

            .global _start

            _start:

            movl $1,%ebx

            movl $message1,%ecx

            movl $len1,%edx

            movl $4,%eax

            int $0x80

            looppie1:

            movl $1,%ebx

            movl $message2,%ecx

            movl $len2,%edx

            movl $4,%eax

            int $0x80

            jmp looppie1

            .data

            message1:

            .ascii "Fail to the power of"

            len1 = . - message1

            message2:

            .ascii " infinity to the power of"

            len2 = . - message2

            1. mittfh
              Pint

              Two more languages...

              class FailRecursion{

              public static void main (String args[]){

              System.out.print("Fail to the power of ");

              while (true) {

              System.out.print("infinity to the power of ");

              }

              }

              }

              #!/bin/bash

              echo Fail to the power of

              while true; do

              echo infinity to the power of

              done

  8. Tom Paine
    FAIL

    Gigapan

    How much longer will people be touting bog standard Gigapans that anyone can make as some amazing technological breakthrough?

    http://gigapan.org/

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not quite public

    A football stadium is not quite public. It's private property where the public are allowed to go. Just like shopping centres. They can and do impose their own conditions such as no photography and it's perfectly legal - usually stupid though.

    So Wembley can allow photography and it's because it's a place where the public are allowed it's also legal to pictures of anyone without needing to hide their faces. Though everyone else (other gigapixel pictures, streetview, et al) do because everyone is scared about the privacy aspect - which is usually bunkum anyway.

    Why is everyone scared of appearing on streetview but happy to have millions of CCTV cameras everywhere spying on you?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      CCTV

      Who ever said we were happy about that?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Expectation

      Even if you are in an ostensibly private place it doesn't follow that you have an expectation of privacy in law. In the case of Wembley stadium on cup final day it is clear that you would have no expectation of privacy since the place would be crawling with TV cameras and press photographers.

  10. Sir Runcible Spoon
    Alien

    Sir

    Hmm, prime examples of British manhood I'm sure.

    Is it me or do they all look like mutants? Perhaps I'm the alien.

    1. ThomH

      What are you talking about?

      They all look like well-educated, open minded, pragmatic types to me.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        You forgot...

        ..rational, objective and athletic too.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          in answer to the above

          the pic in the article? They are the stoke fans....... anon for geographical reasons.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Post your own message

    Where's The Stig?

    1. mittfh

      Alternatively...

      Find someone with horizontal red / white stripes :)

      Or, as these gigapan makers often hide 'eggs' in their pictures, it wouldn't surprise me if an alien or other non-human lifeform has been digitally added to the crowd...

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    @ Sir Runcible

    Dear Sir

    I believe that is the general standard for supporters of Association Football. It appears the EDL did not have an event on that Saturday.

    1. Robert E A Harvey

      Next challenge

      Once we know the names, we could calculate the total IQ. I wonder if it would get into treble figures?

      1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

        Re Next challenge

        Robert, are you aware of the Crowd IQ Phenomenon? People in crowds try to adapt their IQs in order to mingle. Given that it's generally much easier to adapt to a lower IQ, the crowd's average IQ settles around the lowest individual IQ of the attendees. At best.

        When two individuals both with the same IQ do not get on very well with each other they tend to lower their IQs. The larger the group and the higher its drive to homogeneity, the lower will be the resulting IQ of each individual, which is roughly the same as the average IQ of the crowd. It is called the lowest common denominator of IQ.

        This also answers your question: you only need the IQ of the numptiest fan and this gives you an indicator for the maximum possible IQ of the crowd - not very likely a triple-digit figure.

      2. Dinky Carter

        Get your nose out the air

        Such nauseating snobbery.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Doc...

    Credit to Roberto Mancini (MC Manager) for recreating 'Back to the Future'......zoom in on the Man City bench and he can clearly be seen standing by his seat and also gesturing on the touchline at the same time......great scott!!!

  14. JDX Gold badge

    As odd as it may seem, taking pictures of children is not at all illegal

    Why is that odd? This obsession with kiddie-fiddlers is OTT.

    1. hplasm
      Big Brother

      Are you new?

      El Reg has been saying that about TPTB for ages...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    should be quite easy......

    Gather all the photos repeat offenders from all the police forces, job done!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I must admit

      that this appears slightly short-sighted for the people who point themselves out to the world.

      I can imagine the police just waiting for those awkward types who persistently cause trouble but have not been identified yet to flag themselves on this, just so they (the police) can go and beat down their (the self-identified intellectually challenged football fan's) door.

      Or maybe I'm a bit paranoid!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Hairy

    Looks like they share enough hair between them for one breezy armpit.

    Strange how the closeup seems to embody the stereotype of a football fan.

    1. Douglas Lowe

      stereotypes

      In all likelihood that section of the crowd was picked by the journalists for the close-up image precisely because it embodied the stereotype of football fans. Confirmation bias can be very obvious at times in news reports.

  17. jake Silver badge

    This is a useful use of technology?

    Why? What's the point?

    Colo(u)r me a s(c)eptic ...

  18. Piezor

    Wally?

    Has anybody found Wally (Waldo for our overseas readers) yet?

    1. Reading Your E-mail
      Thumb Up

      The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

      Ohhh that would be awesome if they had stuck him in there somewhere :)

    2. Mister_C

      Not tried

      He won't be in the Man City end (too easy) and I hope he isn't in the Stoke City end (too hard).

      Anyone care to look at the rest?

      1. Piezor
        FAIL

        couldn't see him

        I did find Bananaman in the bottom of the south east corner though

    3. waldo kitty
      Thumb Up

      i wasn't there...

      Piezor> Has anybody found Wally (Waldo for our overseas readers) yet?

      there are very few sports events that i like and this wasn't one of them ;)

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    football fanatics

    Do you think people are really that obsessive with football (soccer) or is it they just like hanging round in large crowds with a shared purpose, similar to church going?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV4VVTI5DI8

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pz8shkMTRg

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    FIT

    Saves FIT some time I guess.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Cue the OBL tags

    <- ...it make Must (start here).

    Make a list of every celebrity (genuine Stephen Fry or fake Osama bin Laden) on MyFaceSpacePageBook, and then systematically 'tag' thousands of random football holigans with those random IDs.

  22. Graham Bartlett

    @ R Harvey

    Too right. Each time I'm near Cambridge City football ground and some kind of pre-speech tribal howl goes up, I can't help thinking that a small tactical nuke would significantly raise the city's average IQ. Likewise, an al-Qaeda bombing campaign targetted exclusively at Sky Sports pubs with big St George's flags in the window would not be an entirely bad thing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      yes

      yes, how dare people enjoy something! We should kill them for having passion about something we don't care about!

    2. Sir Runcible Spoon
      Joke

      Sir

      Dear Graham, you do realise though that following that course of action would, in effect, lower your IQ?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Better still...

      Aim it at a certain neo-gothic building and finish the job a certain 17th century chap started...

      (Well, it would be easier than targeting those people who enjoy expressing a wail every day...)

  23. PsychicMonkey
    WTF?

    Stoke

    had two goal keepers and still lost!

    I also think it's progressive having two lines man on one side, or are the conjoined twins?

  24. Purlieu

    Photos

    You can check all you like, it is not illegal even to take pictures, from the street, of children in the school playground.

    You can splutter and choke too.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Ah but

      It's publishing photographs that can get you into bother.

  25. Inselaf
    Thumb Down

    Wot not with me!!!!!!!!!!!

    Personally I would find it an invasion of my privacy. Anyone taking a photo´ of me & then publishing it with out my express permission would be in for a big fight.

    Maybe it is allowed in England these days, it is after all said & done the most observed country these days in Europe.

    Here in Germany it would be not so easy to do anything like this. Unless of course you have waivered your rights through buying a ticket etc.

    So, that is my pound of mustard said. I am sure that my views will cause some bellyache, but that is life, eh?

    1. PsychicMonkey
      FAIL

      being that the game is on TV

      I'm pretty sure you have waived your right not to be photographed.....

  26. Cyclist

    But at the Dons game yesterday...

    I took the kids to see the MK Dons v Peterborough. They wanted to see the Play Off semi; I'm ambivalent these days about the whole game with its diving cheating overpaid nancy boys <con't p94...> and sat for the first half hour with a grumble-face and arms folded wishing I wasn' t there. Guess what? After a while I started to get into it, enjoyed the shouting, the cheering, the dire language from some examples of yoof-of-terday behind us, and found myself jumping up at the third goal early in the second half. It was fun; we all had a smile on our faces, at least until the dubious penalty towards the end.

    That tongue in cheek description earlier of IQs reverting to the mean may well be true. I saw an old chum there - met him when we both regular MENSA-goers and between the two of us I reckon we could have outdone the away end in terms of IQ scores - and he was having a sight more fun than I was. Explain that.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And to think...

    For all these years the so called scientists have speculated on the missing link but failed to find any proof.

  28. Olafthemighty
    FAIL

    Bloody typical!

    The two people I was looking for in the prawn sandwich seats couldn't even make the effort to be in their seats when that bit of the photo was taken! Still, the wine there is particularly good...

  29. R J Tysoe

    @inselaf

    "Here in Germany it would be not so easy to do anything like this. Unless of course you have waivered your rights through buying a ticket etc."

    Yes, those 88,000 people just turned up at Wembley without buying a ticket and luckily manged to sneak in through the back door just behind the burger van. Again.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Everybody and his dog

    I'm puzzled by the assumption that everybody+dog has a facebook account. Hands up those who don't have one.

  31. Jon Smit
    Thumb Down

    Silverstone owns your pics

    Discovered this today

    "The undersigned declares that any material filmed is for personal or internal use only

    and is not for broadcast on any public transmission media anywhere in the world

    (including but not limited to internet, terrestrial, cable or satellite), and agrees to pay

    Silverstone Circuits Limited the sum of £5,000 if any material should appear on such

    media. "

    http://www.silverstone.co.uk/Global/pdf/In-car%20Camera%20Indemnity%20Form.pdf

    Last time I'll support the greedy bastards.

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