According to The New York Times, this incident is the sixth recent reported case where an individual was falsely accused as a result of facial recognition technology used by police, and the third to take place in Detroit.
Reuters reported in 2022, however, that some cities are beginning to rethink bans on face recognition as a crime-fighting tool amid “a surge in crime and increased lobbying from developers.”
Sounds to me like there’s a deeper issue here in these cities (probably society in general) that needs to be tackled at its root why people are turning to crime. Is it because they couldn’t find reliable jobs to support themselves and their families? Is it related to drug abuse issues that might be rooted in or coupled with mental health issues?
If these hold some truth, then cities need to take a look at them much closely, invest in the people and organizations that can help solve them, rather than overly investing in technologies and enforcement that not only do not solve them, but may even further exacerbate these systemic issues.
US police departments continue to use the tech despite low accuracy and obvious mismatches.
This is super common. US law enforcement loves, loves, loves $2 drug tests that react to pretty much anything (including glazed donut sugar and human ashes out of an urn). It serves them as a common method to establish probable cause and end-run around the forth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
So yeah, inaccurate facial recognition gives them grounds to harass innocent Americans and search them to see what crimes they have committed, or they can be pressured to commit (e.g. resisting arrest)
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