There have been dozens of stories about the pseudonymous users of that service being linked back to real identities since the initial first large wave of arrests
Sometimes you don’t need crazy parallel construction theories - just a simple criminal network cracked because the participants believed it to be secure
The CCC in Germany did this once with a picture from Ursula von der Leyen, but IIRC they contacted the original photographer who provided an extremely hi-res image
I think that's fine though.
Because people love to troll when it comes to pixels?
IMO that's bad journalism if it's not the original photo - how about 'the original photo, of which this is a lower quality copy, had enough detail for police to read fingerprint markers from, those markers were matched to the suspect [...]'.
If it's not _the_ photo, then who knows, perhaps it's a fake the BBC produced or it's a stock photo. Why not state details about the pertinent evidence on which the whole story supposedly hangs.
I'm glad they were able to take this guy off the streets but there's a smell to this IMO and it's not just the cheese.
Edit: Someone else shared the link to the uncropped picture: https://www.merseyside.police.uk/news/merseyside/news/2021/m... . Fingerprints are still too blurry but his palm lines are very clear. It could indeed be those.