Why are all of these articles written under the premise that this software sends you automatically to jail? It’s just a first step in the vetting process.
I noticed that I forgot the details a bit. It's worse if you read above links. Anyway, you really do not want to become a suspect!
Well, choosing to respond to a claim that wasn't asserted isn't a valid argument against the original assertion.
> and from there it is valid to discuss whether it might happen again.
This again is working at 'anecdote scale'. Unless you can show that the costs of these anecdotes are anywhere near the collective benefits, then it's worthless. Keep in mind, it's equally worthless to assert there actually are benefits in this system without support, but that's why I'm not asserting that. I'm just saying an isolated argument on one side or the other, especially when it just a fucking anecdote, is functionally meaningless.
And if it happens regularly - a man who looks like Bin Laden today will look just as much like him tomorrow - that would be a major inconvenience.
If you think government departments and the tech companies they outsource to are too competent to repeatedly hassle innocent people due to mistaken identities, just look at the no fly list. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives
NB that being arrested once can hinder someone from getting Visas or jobs in the future and can result in social exclusion.
>Arrest records are generally open to the public unless they concern an active or ongoing investigation.[2]
>Since the arrest record is public, anyone can access the information by going to the jurisdiction’s government website. Also, anyone can obtain the arrest record by going to the county clerk’s office in person.[3]
[1]https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=36914
[2]https://www.rcfp.org/private-eyes/arrest-records
[3]https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-is-a-pub...
https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/02/01/the-perils-of-pers...
Even if the courts do not convict in the end, a lot of damage might already been done.
The pseudo-scientific hair analysis stuff performed by the FBI showed the dangers of "science" and "tech"[1]. People went to real prison because investigators, judges and juries overestimated the flaky results the sometimes outright negligent pseudo-science produced. I imagine some people were shoot during arrests based on that evidence, died in prison or committed suicide.
There also was the Phantom of Heilbronn here in Germany, where police looked for a master criminal and serial killer for ages (2001 to 2009), but it turned out the materials they used to do DNA swaps at crime scenes were contaminated at the factory by a worker[2]. For years nobody of the many involved in the investigations even considered questioning the DNA results.
So even if the science and tech is sound (which it really isn't in case of facial recognition yet, if ever), wrong application, common mistakes, and misunderstanding the results are real problems.
[1] https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-testimo...
I think there are a couple reasons to be hopeful about court systems taking a more nuanced view of this technology: 1) it cannot be denied that it is imprecise, and 2) it's pretty easy for laity to understand (at least in principle) how it works. DNA evidence is effectively magic by comparison.
I actually think the imprecision is an asset for this technology. I would much rather this tool be 95% reliable than 99.99% reliable. The former inherently requires law enforcement to work harder; the later tempts "oh the machine said so it must be right".
Like this guy, who spent 23 years in prison because FBI told the jury some hair they found was his... while it was actually not even human but dog hair.
>An FBI analyst testified that one of the hairs from the stocking mask linked Tribble to the crime and “matched in all microscopic characteristics.” >Tribble’s attorneys were successful in obtaining mitochondrial DNA testing on the 13 hairs recovered from the stocking mask. None of the hairs—including the alleged match—implicated Tribble or Wright. Further, the analysis revealed FBI analysts’ errors, including mistakenly calling a dog hair human. https://www.innocenceproject.org/cases/santae-tribble/
As for face recognition, I wonder if you're correct. I'd expect a lot of people think it's very precise. Well, at least the "My Sibling can unlock my iPhone with their face" debacle might have generated some press to combat that misconception.
There is a quote but I forget from whom that basically says "if you follow anyone for 30 minutes, you'll witness them commit a crime". Although it is likely to be a traffic violation, that doesn't change the fact that constant surveillance would "catch" you soon enough.