Another Wrongful US Arrest from Automated Facial Recognition
/From the article:
Porcha Woodruff was eight months pregnant when police in Detroit, Michigan came to arrest her on charges of carjacking and robbery. She was getting her two children ready for school when six police officers knocked on her door and presented her with an arrest warrant. She thought it was a prank.
“Are you kidding, carjacking? Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?” the lawsuit Woodruff filed against Detroit police reads. She sent her children upstairs to tell her fiance that “Mommy’s going to jail”.
…Woodruff later found out that she was the latest victim of false identification by facial recognition. After her image was incorrectly matched to video footage of a woman at the gas station where the carjacking took place, her picture was shown to the victim in a photo lineup. According to the lawsuit, the victim allegedly chose Woodruff’s picture as the woman who was associated with the perpetrator of the robbery. Nowhere in the investigator’s report did it say the woman in the video footage was pregnant. A month later the charges were dismissed due to insufficient evidence (full article link is below).
The view from the Association: In the UK and EU, no arrests can be made from an automated facial recognition (AFR) identification unless there has been "human intervention". The best person to verify an identification is a Super Recogniser - the US agency NIST stated that combining AFR with a Super Recogniser produced "near perfect results". If police agencies have invested in computer facial recognition, they should ensure that they also invest in the best humans to make it even more effective. Reports such as those quoted will result in more restrictions and even bans on the use of AI by security and law enforcement...so this Association strongly recommends the use of the best people to check identifications before making arrests.