Posted on 10/06/2024 4:41:59 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Hundreds of Americans have been arrested after being connected to a crime by facial recognition software, a Washington Post investigation has found, but many never know it because police seldom disclose their use of the controversial technology.
Police departments in 15 states provided The Post with rarely seen records documenting their use of facial recognition in more than 1,000 criminal investigations over the past four years. According to the arrest reports in those cases and interviews with people who were arrested, authorities routinely failed to inform defendants about their use of the software — denying them the opportunity to contest the results of an emerging technology that is prone to error, especially when identifying people of color.
In fact, the records show that officers often obscured their reliance on the software in public-facing reports, saying that they identified suspects “through investigative means” or that a human source such as a witness or police officer made the initial identification.
In Evansville, Ind., for example, police said they identified a man who beat up a stranger on the street from his tattooed arms, long hair and previous jail booking photos. And in Pflugerville, Tex., police said they learned the name of a man who helped steal $12,500 in merchandise from Ulta Beauty “by utilization of investigative databases.”
Both of these suspects were identified with the aid of facial recognition, according to internal police records — information that was never shared with the accused, according to them or their attorneys. A spokeswoman for Pflugerville declined to answer questions about this case. Evansville police did not respond to requests for comment.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Don’t worry, I’m sure the police would never violate someones rights through fraudulent and unreliable means. Because if they did it would be a FELONY Deprivation of Rights Under the Color of Law case and they could go to PRISON...
How many times has that happened?
Virtually none!
I wonder what the percentage of mistakes on black crooks versus white crooks. I bet they are just looking at absolute numbers which doesn’t take into account blacks commit more crimes.
😆
Why do cops use facial recognition? Because it works.
Why is the Post opposed to it? Because it works.
It is a starting point in identifying likely suspects to investigate.
“Why do cops use facial recognition? Because it works.”
Not always. I’ve seen a few true crime stories where a person was arrested because of facial recognition. The stupid cops based it 100% on that. They didn’t bother to note that the criminals had no tattoos on their arms (or other places), while the arrestees did. Or that one was 6” shorter/taller than the other.
A weird facial recognition thing for me: I don’t do FB, but some kind of facial matching is done by FB. Not sure if it’s “official” facial recognition. Anyhow, sometimes if I’m in a posted picture (which really pisses me off, BTW), my cousin’s wife will be notified that HER picture is there. She’s not even a blood relative, but the AI thinks we’re the same person. And how many thousands/millions of FB users are there?
If they are not revealing the use of the facial recognition then there must of been other, independent evidence they used which was sufficient to establish guilt.
That must explain the false arrests.
I think the more egregious use here would be falsely using it to establish probable cause for search warrants.
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