Biometrics On Steroids — How The Police State Is Going To Use Your Tattoos Against You
By Claire Bernish
ActivistPost.com
JUNE 4, 2016
If you have tattoos, law enforcement might be trying to decipher their meaning — and use the information for identification purposes. But, as with any government program with seemingly innocuous roots, the Tattoo Recognition Technology Challenge (Tatt-C) has potential to trigger repercussions beyond a simple invasion of your privacy.
As privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation reported, in 2104 and 2015, the FBI partnered with the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST — yes, that NIST, responsible for the hotly contended report on the World Trade Center and 9/11) to ramp up tattoo identification technology.
Biometrics companies and other researchers received a giant database of prisoner tattoos and “were asked to run five experiments to show how well their algorithms could match tattoos under various circumstances,” EFF explained.
Some tests involved matching different photos of the same person’s tattoo. Other experiments sought to match similar tattoos on different people based on their characteristics — such as a crucifix, Minnie Mouse, and Chinese calligraphy. These tests pose serious concerns for privacy, free expression, religious freedom, and the right of association.
While, in the past, tattoo identification has served such beneficial purposes as identifying murder victims and suspects or locating missing people, furthering the technology to include interpretation of tattoo symbols poses multiple inherent risks. That isn’t the only area for the technology to go horribly wrong, either.
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