Facial recognition tech is used in our day to day life to unlock smartphone or to tag friends on social media. Some airports use this to scan passengers before they board flight. Departments of motor vehicles use this tech to detect license fraud, identify theft.
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| Black lives matter Image source - Google |
Most common use of face recognition
technology is law enforcement departments. After Williams case, many cities
already banned using facial recognition technology.
Detroit police were trying to find out the
guy whole stole watches from a Shinola retail store. The worth of the watches
stolen are expected to be $3,800. The officers got access to the store security
footage, zoomed into the grainy footage and squared out the picture of the
suspect. Later, the picture of the suspect was run through the facial
recognition software. The software came up with the person as Robert
Julian-Borchak Williams, a 42-year-old from Farmington Hills, Mich., which is
about 25 miles northwest of Detroit.
In January, Williams’ was arrested and
taken into interrogation room. Police put three photos in front of him, out of
which two photos were from the surveillance camera in the store and a photo
from state-issued driver’s license. Williams denied saying that he is not the
one from the surveillance footage but agreed that the person in the license is
himself.
Williams was in remand for 30 hours and
then release on a court bail until a court hearing on the case. At the hearing,
court announced that the charges against Williams were dropped because of
insufficient evidence. You can check the entire report here.
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| Michigan State Police - Investigative Lead Report Image source - Google |
Williams is the first person in the U.S.
who got wrongfully arrested based on the false hit produced by facial
recognition technology.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
of Michigan filed a complaint against the Detroit Police Department asking the
police stop using the software in investigations. After Williams case, the
department passed a bill of new rules. Now, only still photos should be used
for facial recognition not the surveillance footages. Only in the case of
violent crimes, facial recognition should be used.
Many Academic and government studies have
demonstrated that facial recognition systems misidentify color people more
often than others. Most of the nation’s law enforcement agencies have access to
face recognition tools and most of the time, people who are arrested using
facial recognition are not told face recognition was used to arrest them.
Companies like Amazon, Microsoft and IBM
have announced that they are not selling face recognition technologies to law
enforcement agencies, however many other smaller, more specialized companies,
like South Carolina based DataWorks Plus, the company which supplied the
Detroit Police Department with its face-scanning software are still ready to
make deals.
DataWorks Plus has supplied the technology
to government agencies in Santa Barbara, California, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Williams case is a wake-up call to lawmakers to enact new rules into the law to avoid such cases in future.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
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