Security News > 2020 > June > FBI uses T-shirt, tattoo and Vimeo clips to track down alleged arsonist
On Wednesday, a 33-year-old Philadelphia woman was charged with allegedly torching those cars after the FBI tracked her down via a slew of online clues that shows how findable we all are, be we criminals or somebody to be marketed at or tracked.
Namely: her protest T-shirt, which the FBI matched to one sold on the Etsy online marketplace; social media handles; a tattoo of a stylized peace sign on her right forearm; and a Vimeo video that shows a woman matching her description who removed a flaming piece of wooden police barricade from one car and shoved it through the window of another.
It's worth noting that the FBI and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have a tattoo recognition program called Tatt-C that involves creating an open tattoo database to use in training software to automatically recognize tattoos.
The FBI didn't mention using that database, or its vast wealth of facial images, to find the alleged arsonist.
The FBI tracked down the woman's T-shirt: it's sold on the Etsy marketplace for homemade and other items.