In 2019 and 2020, three black men were charged and jailed for crimes they didn’t commit after police used facial recognition to falsely discover them. Their wrongful arrest lawsuits are still pending, but their cases display how AI-powered tools can result in civil rights violations and lasting consequences for the families of the accused.
Now all three men are speaking out against a pending bill in California that might prohibit police from using facial recognition technology as the only real reason for a search or arrest, requiring corroborative evidence as an alternative.
The problem, critics say, is that a possible “match” in facial recognition isn’t evidence – and that it could possibly result in misguided investigations, even when police are on the lookout for corroborating evidence.
After a controversial hearing, the Senate Committee on Public Safety today voted unanimously to proceed Bill of the Assembly of 1814It was passed by the Assembly last month without opposition.
Such a law “would not have stopped the police from falsely arresting me in front of my wife and daughters,” Robert Williams told CalMatters. In 2020, Detroit police charged Williams with stealing hundreds of dollars value of watches – the primary known case of False arrest through facial recognition within the US – after facial recognition matched surveillance video with a photograph of Williams in a government database. Investigators placed his photo in a “six-pack lineup” with five others, and he was singled out by a security guard who had seen a surveillance image but not the theft itself.
“In my case, as in others, the police did exactly what AB 1814 required them to do, but it didn't help,” said Williams, who’s black. “When the facial recognition software told them I was the suspect, it poisoned the investigation. This technology is racially biased and unreliable and should be banned.”
“I implore California lawmakers not to settle for half measures that do not truly protect people like me.”
However, the bill's creator, Democratic Representative Phil Ting of San Francisco, stressed that facial recognition technology should now not be the only real criterion for a warrant, search or arrest. This could prevent illegal arrests like those in Detroit.
And he emphasized that this might improve the established order for Californians.
“The state's law enforcement agencies do not currently need permission from anyone to do anything in the area of facial recognition,” Ting said. “None of the state's laws provide any guidance in this particular area.”
“This is actually a good first step to really provide some security, provide some protection of civil liberties and make sure that we take the first step towards regulating facial recognition technology.”
The first facial recognition searches within the United States occurred greater than twenty years ago. It's a process that begins with a photograph of a suspect, often taken from security camera footage. The facial recognition in your iPhone is trained to match your photo, but the sort utilized by law enforcement searches databases of mugshots or driver's license photos, which may contain tens of millions of photos, and may fail in quite a few ways. Tests by researchers have shown that the technology is less accurate when attempting to People with dark skinPeople who’re AsianNative Americans, individuals who discover as Transgenderif an examination image of a suspect is of poor quality or if the image in a database is outdated.
After a pc compiles an inventory of possible matches from a picture database, police select a suspect from quite a few candidates after which show that photo to an eyewitness. Although people think they’re good at it, eyewitness testimony is a Main reason for miscarriages of justice within the USA.
Because prosecutors use facial recognition to discover potential suspects but ultimately depend on eyewitness accounts, the technology can play a job in criminal investigations but stays hidden from the accused and defense attorneys.
Instructions not to contemplate a possible match with a facial recognition system as the only real reason for an arrest sometimes make no difference. This was the case, for instance, of Alonzo Sawyer, a person who was wrongfully arrested near Baltimore and spent nine days in prison.
Njeer Parks, who spent nearly a 12 months battling allegations that he stole items from a New Jersey hotel gift shop after which nearly hit a police officer with a stolen vehicle, spoke out against the California bill in a video. posted on Instagram last week. The police “won't do their job if the AI already says, 'It's him.' That's what happened to me.”
“I was lucky,” he told CalMatters in a phone interview a couple of receipt that exonerated him and kept him out of jail. “I don't want anyone to go to jail for something they didn't do.”
At today's hearing, the attorney for Michael Oliver, a 3rd Black man falsely accused of attacking a Detroit highschool teacher in 2020, testified. “The warrant application in Michael's case was based solely on a supposed match (with facial recognition technology) and a photo lineup,” said attorney David Robinson. “Other than the photo lineup, the detective did not do any further investigation. So it's easy to say it's the officer's fault for doing a poor job or not investigating. But he relied on (the facial recognition) and believed it must be right. That's the automation bias that was referenced in these sessions.”
“Despite the warning to the officer – 'investigative leads only' – that advice was trumped by the hypnotic effect of this machine, which the officer saw as faster and more intelligent than himself, and that must be right.”
Supporters of Ting's bill include the California Faculty Association and the League of California Cities. The California Police Chief Association argues that facial recognition can reduce crime and supply police with actionable leads. The technology can also be necessary because California desires to host international events akin to the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“Across the country, real-world examples of how law enforcement agencies are using (facial recognition technology) to solve serious crimes demonstrate how important this new technology can be in protecting our communities,” argued the California Police Chiefs Association, citing cases wherein it said facial recognition played a job in identifying the culprits, including a newspaper seat Shooting in Maryland and a rape in New York.
Facial recognition alone should never result in false arrests, Jake Parker of the Security Industry Association told members of the California Assembly just a few weeks ago. That's why AB 1814 is meant to support investigative approaches with evidence, not only a possible match in facial recognition.
But greater than 50 advocacy organizations – including the ACLU, Access Reproductive Justice and the Electronic Frontier Foundation signed a letter against the law last weekThey called facial recognition unreliable, a proven threat to black men, and a possible danger to protesters, abortion seekers, and the immigrant and LGBTQ communities.
“By allowing police to scan and identify people without restriction, AB 1814 will also increase unnecessary police calls that all too often have the potential to escalate into deadly encounters. This will continue regardless of how accurate facial recognition technology becomes,” the organizations said in a letter. “There is no way for people to know if facial recognition is being used against them and no mechanism to ensure police are complying with the law.”
Ting also drafted a bill in 2019 that First, a everlasting ban on the usage of police of bodycam recordings with facial recognition. This was modified to a brief ban that resulted in January 2023.
He told CalMatters that he’s uncomfortable with the proven fact that California currently has no restrictions on the usage of facial recognition by law enforcement.
In an announcement, he said his bill “simply requires officers to have additional evidence before proceeding with a search, arrest, or warrant affidavit. I believe a precautionary measure can help protect people's privacy and due process rights while still allowing local governments to go further and enforce their own facial recognition bans.”
Ting’s city of San Francisco was the primary major city within the country to ban facial recognition in 2019, but a evaluation by City Attorney David Chiu stated that the town Passing Proposition E in March enables the police to acknowledge faces in images taken with cameras and drones. The Washington Post last month reported that San Francisco police are circumventing restrictions by asking law enforcement in neighboring cities to conduct the manhunt for them.
Re-elected San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin says false arrests related to facial recognition have almost definitely occurred in California, but they continue to be unknown to the general public unless prosecutors file charges and the defendants are later tried in a civil suit for damages. Often such cases could be settled out of court.
“We absolutely need a legal and regulatory framework for these technologies, but I do not believe AB 1814 is sufficient to protect civil liberties or provide meaningful safeguards for the use of these new and powerful technologies,” said Boudin, who now directs UC Berkeley's Criminal Law & Justice Center.
Lawmakers have until the top of the legislative session in August to make your mind up whether to pass AB 1814.
image credit : www.mercurynews.com