The FBI Is Building a Tattoo-Reading System to Chart Criminal Affiliations
13th June 2016
An investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation has shed new light on an experimental tattoo recognition program run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and raised serious questions about the privacy safeguards in place.
I don’t see how marks on your body come under the category ‘privacy’. ‘Advertising’ perhaps.
The tattoo project has two potential uses. A simple recognition system can use individual tattoos to identify specific suspects over time, supplementing fingerprints and simple facial photos. But more sophisticated systems will also be able to identify tattoo patterns that may suggest particular criminal affiliations. Law enforcement agencies already catalog specific tattoos associated with Russian mafia and white supremacist groups, and the FBI believes an automated system might help uncover previously unrecorded associations. “Tattoos provide valuable information on an individual’s affiliations or beliefs and can support identity verification of an individual,” one researcher wrote in a NIST whitepaper.
And, indeed, having a tattoo at all reflects a degree of narcissism that constitutes, in my view, a character flaw at least as significant as anything one might post on ‘social media’.
It’s that second use case that EFF finds most concerning, potentially standing as a threat to free expression. “Tattoos are free speech that we wear on our skin,” the group writes. “Our tattoos express who we were, who we are, and who we hope to be. But when law enforcement looks at our tattoos, they see unique biometric identifiers and a shortcut to learning our personal beliefs and our social connections.”
Well, if tattoos express ‘who we are’, I don’t see any legitimacy to objecting to it being used to ‘learning our personal beliefs and our social connections’. We have a right to free speech, but it you use your free speech to shout ‘I hate Jews!’ I’m going to presume that it reflects a personal belief and feel perfectly justified in not hiring or doing business with you. You can’t have it both ways, although there’s a lot of that going around these days.