Text Attribution

Frequently, acts of terrorism involve messages that do not contain handwriting, preventing the use of forensic handwriting comparison to identify the author. Appen Pty, Ltd. developed the Text Attribution Tool (TAT) to analyze text to predict information about the author. The automated system evaluates vocabulary, spelling, writing style, linguistics and other indicators. These indicators yield traits about the author, such as age, sex, education, religion, geographic orientation and native language. The TAT has the ability to analyze text in both English and Arabic. The Text Attribution Tool can also compare a received message with those stored in its database for a positive identification that the same author wrote both documents. The tool can also give statistical probabilities on the results derived from the database to allow for defensibility in a court of law. Requests for additional information on the Text Attribution Tool should be sent to appen@appen.com.au.