Police may soon be able to catch criminals by the ink they are
sporting. Computer scientists are developing a new program that
will be able to identify suspects by their tattoos and match
them to photos in police databases or on social media. Automatic
identification through recognition of body art could provide a
much needed breakthrough in detective work, often thwarted by
grainy footage from surveillance videos that make it difficult
to see a criminal’s face to use facial recognition. ‘Those
photos are often so bad that face recognition wouldn’t come even
close’ to finding a match in a database, Terrance Boult, a
computer science professor at the University of Colorado,
explained to Live Science. To rectify this problem, Boult worked
with a team of researchers to develop a computer program that
reviews body ink, scars, moles and visible skin markings in
photos. Photo by philippe leroyer used under a Creative Commons
license. this is a terrible use of technology… terrible.