Tattoo recognitionFederal researchers complete second round of problematic tattoo recognition experiments
Despite igniting controversy over ethical lapses and the threat to civil liberties posed by its tattoo recognition experiments the first time around, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently completed its second major project evaluating software designed to reveal who we are and potentially what we believe based on our body art.
Despite igniting controversy over ethical lapses and the threat to civil liberties posed by its tattoo recognition experiments the first time around, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently completed its second major project evaluating software designed to reveal who we are and potentially what we believe based on our body art.
Unsurprisingly, these experiments continue to be problematic.
The latest experiment was called Tatt-E, which is short for “Tattoo Recognition Technology Evaluation.” Using tattoo images collected by state and local law enforcement from incarcerated people, NIST tested algorithms created by state-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences and MorphoTrak, a subsidiary of the French corporation Idemia.
According to the Tatt-E results, which were published in October, the best-performing tattoo recognition algorithm by MorphoTrak had 67.9 percent accuracy in matching separate images of tattoo to each other on the first try.
NIST further tested the algorithms on 10,000 images downloaded from Flickr users by Singaporean researchers, even though it was not part of the original scope of Tatt-E. These showed significantly improved accuracy, as high as 99 percent.
Tattoo recognition technology is similar to other biometric technologies such as face recognition or iris scanning: an algorithm analyzes an image of a tattoo and attempts to match it to a similar tattoo or image in a database. But unlike other forms of biometrics, tattoos are not only a physical feature but a form of expression, whether it is a cross, a portrait of a family member, or the logo for someone’s favorite band.
Since 2014, the FBI has sponsored NIST’s tattoo recognition project to advance this emerging technology. In 2016, an EFF investigation revealed that NIST had skipped over key ethical oversight processes and privacy protections with its earlier experiments called Tatt-C, which is short for the Tattoo Recognition Challenge. This experiment promoted using tattoo recognition technology to investigate people’s beliefs and memberships, including their religion. The more recent Tatt-E, however, did not test for “tattoo similarity”—the ability to match tattoos that are similar in theme in design, but belong to different people.
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