According to a new report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the FBI has been working with the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to create software that would recognise tattoos that signify an affiliation to a religious group, gang, or political ideology. The software would use an existing database of 15,000 tattoo images taken of inmates and arrestees to automatically identify and profile others with similar designs. The initiative is one that the EFF investigators claim “threatens free speech and privacy.”
The EFF reports that existing algorithms are able to identify tattoos with “greater than 90 percent accuracy,” but the programmes are not yet able to match individuals with the designs. The NIST and the FBI plan to improve the system by enhancing the database to 100,000 images with the help of law enforcement departments in Tennessee, Michigan, and Florida. The EFF obtained information from an NIST workshop presentation in which the organisation said that tattoos “contain intelligence; messages, meaning, and motivation.”
The language in the presentation also mentioned the connections that could be made between tattoos and “gangs, sub-cultures, religious or ritualistic beliefs, or political ideology” (though the references to religion and political ideologies were removed from public documents after the EFF voiced its concerns).
Source: www.mentalfloss.com
