Facial recognition tech lands innocent woman with bogus carjacking charge
www.malwarebytes.com
We take a look at another case of facial recognition technology getting it wrong in the land of law enforcement.

Summary

  • Detroit woman wrongly arrested for carjacking and robbery due to facial recognition technology error.
  • Porsche Woodruff, 8 months pregnant, mistakenly identified as culprit based on outdated 2015 mug shot.
  • Surveillance footage did not match the identification, victim wrongly identified Woodruff from lineup based on the 2015 outdated photo.
  • Woodruff arrested, detained for 11 hours, charges later dismissed; she files lawsuit against Detroit.
  • Facial recognition technology’s flaws in identifying women and people with dark skin highlighted.
  • Several US cities banned facial recognition; debate continues due to lobbying and crime concerns.
  • Law enforcement prioritized technology’s output over visual evidence, raising questions about its integration.
  • ACLU Michigan involved; outcome of lawsuit uncertain, impact on law enforcement’s tech use in question.
  • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    This is the issue with big data. Big enough database you will find a closest match that seems pretty good. False positives are a huge concern in any big data approach… and couple that with lazy policing well you get this.

  • ConsciousCode@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Facial recognition should always be a clue, never evidence. It should have the same weight as eyewitness testimony, because the algorithms will always have personal biases from their dataset. Otherwise, we risk lawyers saying stuff like “the algorithm gives a 99% confidence this is you” and the jury thinks this is some objective measure. Meanwhile, the algorithm only has 1% BIPOC in its dataset and labels with high confidence lots of them as being the same person.

    Reminds me of the movie Anon, with this jaw-dropping quote at the end: “It’s not that I have something to hide. I have nothing I want to show you.”

  • Dandroid@dandroid.app
    2·
    1 year ago

    This tech should be illegal outside of entertainment purposes imo. Things like Snapchat filters are fine, but using it to arrest people or advertise to people is straight up dystopian insanity.

    • ConsciousCode@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m not sure it should be illegal, since it can be legitimately useful, but maybe something like “inconclusive evidence that isn’t enough to grant a warrant”. That way, you can get a list of potential suspects but you don’t end up violating rights by issuing undue warrants.

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is ridiculous. It’s fortunate for her that she was pregnant.

    One would hope that this would be used as a case study on why this technology is dangerous, especially when in the hands of obviously incompetent or just malicious actors, but I doubt that’ll happen.

    • atheos@lemmy.atheos.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      The fact that she was pregnant had no bearing on the case being dropped, it only got dropped because the alleged victim didn’t appear at court. I wish her well in the lawsuit.