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A comment on Why facial recognition has led to false arrests.

Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by cultus on Monday August 24, 2020 @10:04AM (#24260753)
I'm not trying to be snarky here, but can anybody point to an example of machine learning used in law enforcement that hasn't lead to inequitable outcomes?
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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by hammock on Monday August 24, 2020 @10:23AM (#24260949)
Equally non snarky, what is something in law enforcement that has led to equitable outcomes?
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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by glenda on Monday August 24, 2020 @10:31AM (#24261029)
The more I look into the history and tactics of modern policing the more this becomes apparent.

Police are willing to use broken machine learning technology because it “works for them” - they don’t necessarily care about accuracy they just want someone locked up.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by vorpalhex on Monday August 24, 2020 @11:39AM (#24261677)
The police are fundamentally a low paid blue collar labor force with union protections. They are not your college professor or the protagonist of a murder mystery, but more like a plumber or construction worker.

The moment you understand that, it's not a mystery that they sort of blindly accept tools that seem to work without deep introspection. They are not equipped to be a data analytics shop, they are equipped to fill out paperwork and sometimes get into tussles.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by bkor on Monday August 24, 2020 @12:01PM (#24261911)
> The police are fundamentally a low paid blue collar labor force with union protections

Please keep in mind that this is not true worldwide. In various countries you're only admitted after 1.5-2 years of police-specific education. You might still not be a police officer if they seem you unfit.

Also, you don't seem to value plumbers or construction workers. A colleague used to be a construction worker. It's very interesting to hear the knowledge he has on that. Plus pretty damn handy for understanding how to improve your house. Just because he did a lot of work with his hands doesn't mean he isn't damn bright.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by vorpalhex on Monday August 24, 2020 @12:30PM (#24262253)
At no point did I indicate I don't value blue collar workers such as plumbers or construction workers, quite the opposite. At most I said the police were low paid blue collar workers - and in general I do believe most blue collar workers are underpaid. For what it's worth, I do also value our police forces, even with their flaws. But a blue collar profession has a different set of knowledge handling than a white collar one - it's not that one is better or worse, but they are intrinsically different ways of knowing.

> Please keep in mind that this is not true worldwide

You're correct and my comment is US centric. What I find interesting is that some US cities have seemingly moved farther from a more educated police force, removing requirements around having college degrees and reducing trainings.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by SpicyLemonZest on Monday August 24, 2020 @10:56AM (#24261281)
Enforcement of the laws is generally an equitable outcome. I'm not saying the law is perfect, but the burden of crime falls disproportionately on the least privileged. In a city with a lot of burglars, the rich buy insurance and private security and shotguns while the poor just don't get to feel safe in their homes.
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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by freeone3000 on Monday August 24, 2020 @11:13AM (#24261438)
Ah, but the laws themselves are unjust. Stealing $5 from your work till is an imprisonable offense, stealing $100 from your employee's paycheck may result in you having to pay it back.
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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by sudosysgen on Monday August 24, 2020 @11:24AM (#24261536)
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

   - Anatole France
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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by SpicyLemonZest on Monday August 24, 2020 @11:40AM (#24261682)
Again, I agree the law is unjust in some ways! Many forms of wage theft ought to be crimes.

What doesn't make sense to me is the implication that decriminalizing petty theft would make the law more just. If people go around stealing $5 all the time, Walmart can absorb that loss - the guy who's flat broke until his paycheck this Friday can't.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by vorpalhex on Monday August 24, 2020 @11:42AM (#24261696)
> Stealing $5 from your work till is an imprisonable offense

Unless you pointed a gun or knife at your coworker, no it's not.

> but the laws themselves are unjust

Then address the laws and move to change them.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by vertex-four on Monday August 24, 2020 @12:45PM (#24262444)
> Unless you pointed a gun or knife at your coworker, no it's not.

Technically, yes, it is in most states if the judge wanted to throw the book at you (for example, if you've ever committed a crime before) - https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federa... - and not only that but three strikes laws can result in imprisonment even if it wasn't.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by throwaway0a5e on Monday August 24, 2020 @01:24PM (#24262970)
>Equally non snarky, what is something in law enforcement that has led to equitable outcomes?

DNA.

I can't think of anything that was developed by law enforcement for law enforcement though.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by pessimizer on Monday August 24, 2020 @10:52AM (#24261236)
Could you just pick the clearest cut one, and type a few sentences explaining it?

edit: not trying to get you to do my work for me, but for an existence proof people don't commonly list a bunch of things by name without explaining how they apply. They list one thing (or one class of things, or how to construct a thing), and exactly how it applies.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by jhayward on Monday August 24, 2020 @11:16AM (#24261468)
I sampled a few of those links, and without exception they all touted the true positive matches without any mention of false positives, nor of what consequences were visited upon the innocents who were pipelined in to the criminal system by them.
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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by busterarm on Monday August 24, 2020 @12:17PM (#24262114)
Anyone who understands testing knows that you cannot eliminate both false positives and false negatives and that you have to pick one.

That's why these systems always have to be combined with good policework. What's being asked for is a test that cannot be passed.

This pretty much applies across the board with evidence testing.

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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by jhayward on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @06:43PM (#24277141)
No, what's being asked for is evidence that the system being developed does not result in an increase in inequity in the real world. That's testable, and achievable. The list of promos/booster articles posted is not any form of demonstration of that.
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Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests by tehwebguy on Monday August 24, 2020 @02:31PM (#24263801)
There may be some winners in here but every NY Post article I've ever read about policing appears to be dictated directly by NYPD and posted without challenge.
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