A missing persons case in Mexico recently sparked a heated debate about the excessive use of filters and image editing tools online. Efforts to find a 30-year-old woman who went missing in the state of Chiapas earlier this month were hampered by the fact that the photos used by police on missing persons posters looked nothing like her.
Grecia Guadalupe Orantes Mendoza went missing on the night of April 12, in the municipality of Ocozocoautla de Espinosa. Following a report filed by the young woman’s family, police activated the Alba Protocol, a mechanism that initiates immediate actions for the search for missing women.
As part of the protocol, police used some of Grecia’s social media photos to create missing persons posters that they then distributed both online and among the local community. There was just one problem – according to the people who knew the 30-year-old woman, the person in the photos looked nothing like her!
In these types of situations, when time is of the essence and every hour that passes makes finding the victim alive less likely, missing persons posters play a crucial role, but in this particular case, they only made it more difficult for locals to recognize the missing woman.
“How were they going to find her with photos full of filters?” was one of the comments that circulated on various platforms, reflecting the impact that detail had on the perception of the case.
Luckily, the woman was found alive several days later on a highway connecting Ocozocoautla with the municipality of Jiquipilas, and she remains in police custody. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance and her subsequent location remain confidential while the case is being investigated.
The case of Grecia Guadalupe Orantes Mendoza has sparked a debate about the use of social images for missing persons posters. Although they are the easiest source for such important visual material, experts say that the frequent use of filters hinders police instead of helping them.
“The National Search Commission for Missing Persons identified some time ago that identification forms for the Alba Protocol are failing frequently when trying to locate missing persons, because they are generated using photos from social media, where users employ numerous filters and even artificial intelligence software,” security consultant David Saucedo said.
