i think he should be allowed to remain private, if he prefers to be. that being said, it's amazing they were able to profile him this way.

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Banksy lawyers delayed geographical profiling study

• 3 hours ago
• From the section Science & Environmen

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A study that tests the method of geographical profiling on Banksy has appeared, after a delay caused by an intervention from the artist's lawyers.

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Scientists at Queen Mary University of London found that the distribution of Banksy's famous graffiti supported a previously suggested real identity.

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The study was due to appear in the Journal of Spatial Science a week ago.

The BBC understands that Banksy's legal team contacted QMUL staff with concerns about how the study was to be promoted.

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Those concerns apparently centred on the wording of a press release, which has now been withdrawn.

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Taylor and Francis, which publishes the journal, said that the research paper itself had not been questioned. It appeared online on Thursday unchanged, after being placed "on hold" while conversations between lawyers took place.

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Geographic profiling is a statistical technique that originated in criminology but has recently proved its value in other fields, from tracing infectious disease outbreaks to locating the roosts of wild bats.

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It takes a large set of locations - whether crime scenes, disease cases or bat feeding sites - and runs through various groupings of those locations to find "hot spots" that could be jumping-off points for whatever activity is being mapped.

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The hot spots can be used to concentrate a subsequent search, or to whittle down a long list of suspects.

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When the QMUL researchers put the method to work on a list of Banksy artwork locations in London and Bristol, they said that the resulting "geoprofile" was a good match for an obvious candidate: Robin Gunningham, whom the Mail on Sunday named in 2008 after an investigation into Banksy's identity.

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A geographic profile, calculated across London, showed peaks in particular locations

Addresses connected to Mr Gunningham using publicly available information - places he has lived or frequented, for example - scored highly on the geoprofile in both cities.

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The scientists conducted the study to demonstrate the wide applicability of geoprofiling - but also out of interest, said biologist Steve Le Comber, "to see whether it would work".

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"What I thought I would do is pull out the 10 most likely suspects, evaluate all of them and not name any… But it rapidly became apparent that there is only one serious suspect, and everyone knows who it is.

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"If you Google Banksy and Gunningham you get something like 43,500 hits."

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption In January, a satirical work near the French embassy in London was boarded up

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He and his colleagues are fans of the artist, Dr Le Comber said, and did not believe their work had "unmasked" him.

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"I'd be surprised if it's not [Gunningham], even without our analysis, but it's interesting that the analysis offers additional support for it.

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"You sort of default to the terminology from criminology, where you're talking about suspects and crime sites, but that doesn't imply any moral judgment - that these are actually crimes, or to be deplored, or whatever.

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"That's even more important in disease biology, of course."

The criminologist and former detective who pioneered geoprofiling, Canadian Dr Kim Rossmo - now at Texas State University in the US - is a co-author on the paper.

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The researchers say their findings support the use of such profiling in counter-terrorism, based on the idea that minor "terrorism-related acts" - like graffiti - could help locate bases before more serious incidents unfold.

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Commenting on the research, Spencer Chainey from University College London said it was an intriguing and "perfectly legitimate" application of the technique.

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"I'd never thought of it being used that way," said Dr Chainey, who runs the only geographic profiling course held outside the US.

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He added that the study is perhaps not as precise, in some respects, as the way working criminologists might use the method. Outliers in the location data were not excluded, for example, and the researchers did not use a timeline of which graffiti appeared when.

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"They've looked at all the data without considering the temporal features of it. I don't necessarily think they haven't got the right man - I just think there's more they could have done to fine tune the analysis."

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more at link...

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/femail/article-1034538/Graffiti-artist-Banksy-unmasked---public-schoolboy-middle-class-suburbia.html

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Graffiti artist Banksy unmasked ... as a former public schoolboy from middle-class suburbia

By Claudia Joseph for MailOnline Created: 08:38 EST, 12 July 2008

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He is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, artist alive. To some a genius, to others a vandal. Always controversial, he inspires admiration and provokes outrage in equal measure.

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Since Banksy made his name with his trademark stencil-style 'guerrilla' art in public spaces - on walls in London, Brighton, Bristol and even on the West Bank barrier separating Israelis and Palestinians - his works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

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He has dozens of celebrity collectors including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera.

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In the frame: The man in this photograph, taken in Jamaica four years ago, is believed to be Banksy

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He is also known for his headline-making stunts, such as leaving an inflatable doll dressed as a Guantanamo prisoner in Disneyland, California, and hanging a version of the Mona Lisa - but with a smiley face - in the Louvre, Paris.

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But perhaps his most provocative statement, and the one that generates the most publicity, is the fact that Banksy's true identity has always been a jealously guarded secret, known to only a handful of trusted friends.

A network of myths has grown up around him. That his real name is Robin Banks. That he used to be a butcher. That his parents don't know what he does, believing him to be an unusually successful painter and decorator.

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Then there's the suggestion that Banksy is actually a collective of artists and doesn't exist at all.

Such is the curiosity about Banksy that when the great man threw a pizza box into a bin in Los Angeles, the box resurfaced on auction site eBay, with the seller suggesting that the few anchovies left inside might yield traces of his DNA.

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He is the Scarlet Pimpernel of modern art, so adept at leaving false trails that even his own agent has claimed that he is not certain of his identity.

Indeed, trying to establish just who the elusive Banksy is has proved as difficult as predicting the location of his next work.

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Famous fans: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at a Banksy show in Los Angeles where they spent £200,000

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But now, after an exhaustive year-long investigation in which we have spoken to dozens of friends, former colleagues, enemies, flatmates and members of Banksy's close family, The Mail on Sunday has come as close as anyone possibly can to revealing his identity.

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And far from being a radical tearaway from an inner-city council estate, the man we have identified as Banksy is, perhaps all too predictably, a former public schoolboy brought up in middle-class suburbia.

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Our search began with a photograph taken in Jamaica showing a man in a blue shirt and jeans, with a hint of a smile on his face and a spray can at his feet.

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Taken four years ago, it was said to show Banksy at work. When the picture was published it appeared to be the first chink in the armour of anonymity with which the artist has shielded himself ever since his work began to attract the attention of the art world.

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Naturally, Banksy denied the picture was of him. Indeed, as we discovered, Banksy and those close to him tend to deny everything.

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Armed with this photograph, we travelled to Bristol, long said to have been Banksy's home city, where we made contact with a man who claimed to have once met the artist in the flesh.

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Of course, many people claim as much, but the moment one starts asking for more information, one discovers they actually 'know someone who met Banksy' - and the trail runs cold.

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However, this man claimed not only to have met the elusive artist but was able to furnish us with a name - not the usual variations of the name Banks but one all the more intriguing.

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The man in the photograph, he insisted, was formerly known as Robin Gunningham - and it didn't require much imagination to work out how such a name could result in the nickname Banksy.

From records available to the public, we were able to glean further information.

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Mystery boy: Robin Gunningham in 1989 when he was a pupil at Bristol Cathedral School, below

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Robin's father, Peter Gordon Gunningham, 66, is a retired contracts manager from the Whitehall area of Bristol. His mother, Pamela Ann Dawkin-Jones, 67, was a company director's secretary and grew up in the exclusive surroundings of Clifton. She now works in a nursing home.

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The couple married on April 25, 1970, at Kingswood Wesley Methodist Church. On February 8, 1972, their daughter Sarah was born at Bristol Maternity Hospital, by which time Peter had been promoted to area manager for a hotel company and the couple had bought their first home, a semidetached house in Bristol.

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On July 28, 1973, Robin was born in the same hospital. According to neighbours, the boy had early surgery for a cleft palette.

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When Robin was nine, the family moved to a larger home in the same street and it is there he spent his formative years and became interested in graffiti.

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A neighbour, Anthony Hallett, recalls the couple moving into the street as newlyweds and living there until 1998. They have since separated.

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When we showed Mr Hallett the Jamaica photograph, he said the man in it was Robin Gunningham.

In 1984, Robin, then 11, donned a black blazer, grey trousers and striped tie to attend the renowned Bristol Cathedral School, which currently charges fees of £9,240 a year and lists supermodel Sophie Anderton as a former pupil.

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It is hard to imagine Banksy, the anti-authoritarian renegade, as a public schoolboy wandering around the 17th Century former monastery, with its upper and lower quadrangles and its prayers in the ancient cathedral.

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But we then found a school photograph, taken in 1989, of a bespectacled Robin Gunningham in which he shows a discernible resemblance to the man in the Jamaica photograph.

Indeed, fellow pupils remember Robin, who was in Deans House, as being a particularly gifted artist.

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Scott Nurse, an insurance broker who was in Robin's class, said: 'He was one of three people in my year who were extremely talented at art. He did lots of illustrations. I am not at all surprised if he is Banksy. He was also in the house rugby team and I think he played hockey as well.'

In the rare interviews Banksy has given (always anonymously), the artist has acknowledged that it was while at school that he first became interested in graffiti.

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Love it. I hope they never find his real identity.

purplethunder3121 said:

Love it. I hope they never find his real identity.

i do too. some reporter asked robin gunninghan's mom and pop about the photo of 'banksy' but both mom and pop denied the whole thing, in fact, they went so far as to deny they even had a son named robin he's a cutie, if that's actually him

[Edited 3/3/16 9:50am]