FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

Re:FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-r... by MertsA on Monday July 08, 2019 @08:43AM (#20382209)

Ugh, this is the worst part about this mess IMHO. U.S. law enforcement has time and time again shown that they are more than willing to argue in bad faith about statistics. This is going to turn out no different than fishing expeditions based on partial DNA matches where the prosecution predictably finds some 1/100,000 match after they search a database of 250,000 people and use that as some cornerstone of "obvious guilt" and convince the jury that there's only a 1/100,000 chance that he's innocent.

So much of forensic science is a sham, we claim as a country to uphold a system of justice whereby you're innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, yet so many prisoners on death row have been exonerated, some posthumously even when there's no real incentive to look for evidence of innocence at that point.

Who wants to bet that prosecutors are going to start using flawed facial recognition results as if they are equivalent to a victim picking out a suspect from a lineup of 10 people? "There was a 99% chance of a match"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-r... by Roy78 on Monday July 08, 2019 @09:35PM (#20388290)

I've worked in DNA forensics/DNA databasing/LEO IT for about 10 years. I have never heard of DNA evidence with a statistical likelihood of 1/100,000 being presented in court. It is true that all evidentiary DNA is presented in a statistical manner, but the statistical thresholds are far higher than 1/10x the amount of people on earth. A professional accredited DNA forensics laboratory would never publish or release a report with shoddy statistics like that. If attempted it would ruin careers and shut down a lab, today in 2019. We also work on OLD exoneration cases.

Maybe prior to the early 90's when the technology and chemistries were still kinda crude and not every lab could afford accreditation, but definitely not in the US in the past 10 years.

To be clear I am not arguing about the philosophy of if it's ethical to use DNA databases or facial recognition from driver's license databases. I'm saying comparing the use of DNA evidence to using facial recognition on a driver's license database doesn't make sense.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-r... by liberte82 on Monday July 08, 2019 @10:46AM (#20383162)

I totally never thought of stats for forensic science being presented in a misleading way before like in your example but it completely makes sense. The odds of finding _any_ 1/100,000 match are incredibly high. Wow.

[ Parent | on HN ]