FBI facial recognition: There's an app for that
There have been automatic recognition programs written previously to identify tattoos, scars, moles, or other skin markings, but Terrance Boult, a computer science professor at the University of Colorado, and his colleagues built upon that system. They added in artificial intelligence to find “likely matches in a photo database. The program is able to find similar tattoos that are not exactly the same, but which might help identify gang members who get coordinating ink.” A U.S. Army grant provided the funding for this research.
Meanwhile, for us Earth-bound Internet users, the Department of Homeland Security has launched yet another type of surveillance for the government. DHS awarded Accenture Federal Services a $3 million, yearlong “biosurveillance” contract for mining social media.
You know, Orwell's vision of Big Brother's monitoring system looks so toothless compared to the real thing.
