this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023

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Detroit woman sues city after being falsely arrested while pregnant due to facial recognition technology (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Detroit woman sues city after being falsely arrested while pregnant due to facial recognition technology::A Detroit woman is suing the city and a police detective after she was falsely arrested because of facial recognition technology while she was eight months pregnant, according to court documents.

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[–] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 76 points 1 year ago (2 children)

According to a recent review, 100% of the people falsely arrested via facial recognition findings have been black.

The technology needs to be legally banned from law enforcement applications, because law enforcement is not making a good faith effort to use the technology.

[–] lawrence@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

100% !?

I think that facial recognition software is a bit biased.

[+] gelberhut@lemdro.id -14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I do not see a bias here. It did not assumed that criminal is black by default or so, it simply works much worse for black people.

There could be different reasons for that. For example it can suck recognizing black faces in bad light conditions.

[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a Systemic Bias; in this case Systemic racism.

The outcome a product or service disproportionately targets Black people. It wasn’t designed to do it, so it’s not overt racism, it just worked out that way.

Camera systems inherently have a harder time with dark skin. That’s a fact. However it’s been found time and time again that these systems are predominantly created by and tested on light skin individuals. So the bias is built into the flawed creation. You can see this in Hollywood where lighting has only recently been set up to highlight dark skin with majority black casts and show runners in shows like Atlanta and Insecure.

[+] gelberhut@lemdro.id -8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could you please point where it targets disproportionally black. Does it recognizes black people instead of white? this would be a racism.

If it just recognizes completely wrong faces for black people - it is a shitty quality which, buy the way, works in favour of black criminals.

[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m speaking generally, not about this system specifically. It is probably like every other camera based system that struggles with dark skin over light skin. Even things like automatic sink sensors in public bathrooms have failed in this way https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-dark-skin-1797931773

[+] gelberhut@lemdro.id -6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, I know. And I agree that when this happens in conditions when a human can do the work well - it is a bias. However, when this happens in conditions when a human cannot do the work either it could be a physic, like dark is worse visible in darkness.

And in exactly discussed case it is not that clear what was the reason.

it is a matter of interpretation as well: one can say "a system helps black criminals to avoid being arrested".

For me, this false reconginision statistic is an alarming signal which says that the system works bad and deeper analyses must be done, and meanwhile, police must be more accurate dealing with its results.

[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The outcome of the bad technology and policing is disproportionately effecting dark skinned people. That’s where it becomes systemic racism. No one decided to design a system to arrest more blacks people. The outcome of various factors ended that way however. Sometimes it’s just a consequence of nature, but most of the time there are clear reasons like lack of representation in design and testing that would have found the problems earlier.

[–] gelberhut@lemdro.id 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Where did you read about "arrest more black people"? They say it points to wrong people when a criminal has black skin. You can also describe it "helps black criminals hide them self".

I'm absolutely with you being against racism and other discriminations, but exactly in this case rasims and bias is not that relevant. Overusing terms like "rasism" makes the team weaker and people start consider it as a minor thing. Like one associates "racism" with non ideal snarcamera settings, what is dangerous.

[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Arrests more innocent black or darker skinned people is what I meant.

I’m not overusing the term, you’re conflating two types of racism, and need to understand the context in order to understand what others are speaking about. If you just assume everyone is talking about overt racism all the time, you’re going to jump to the wrong conclusions and probably think people are being dramatic or ridiculous half the time.

[–] Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Anyone in the photography industry will tell you yes

[–] fabian_drinks_milk@lemmy.fmhy.net 3 points 1 year ago

A similar thing has happened here in the Netherlands. Algorithms have been used to detect fraud, but had a discriminatory bias and accused thousands of parents of child benefits fraud. Those parents came in huge financial problems as they had to back back the allowances, many even got their children taken away and to this day haven't gotten them back.

The Third Rutte Cabinet did resign over this scandal, but many of those politicians came back at another position, including prime minister Rutte, because that's somehow allowed.

Wikipedia (English): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scandal

[–] hoodlem@hoodlem.me 22 points 1 year ago

Facial recognition by law enforcement should be banned.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 16 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A Detroit woman is suing the city and a police detective after she was falsely arrested because of facial recognition technology while she was eight months pregnant, according to court documents.

Porcha Woodruff, 32, was getting her two children ready for school on the morning of Feb. 16 when six police officers showed up at her doorstep and presented her with an arrest warrant alleging robbery and carjacking.

"Ms. Woodruff later discovered that she was implicated as a suspect through a photo lineup shown to the victim of the robbery and carjacking, following an unreliable facial recognition match," court documents say.

When Oliver learned that a woman had returned the victim's phone to the gas station, she ran facial technology on the video, which identified her as Woodruff, the lawsuit alleges.

On the day Woodruff was arrested, she and her fiancé urged officers to check the warrant to confirm whether the woman who committed the crime was pregnant, which they refused to do, the lawsuit alleges.

The office confirmed that facial recognition prompted police to include the plaintiff's photo in a six-pack, or array of images of potential suspects in the warrant package.

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[–] TIEPilot@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

And all the facial recognition has failed on black people... Is this a family Guy episode?

[–] SamboT@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Fuck yes. Go set some precedent.