Re:Why facial recognition has led to false arrests
by BurningFrog on Monday August 24, 2020 @04:42PM
(#24265279)
Yeah, those issues may be big problems. Or they may not.
My point is that the way to know is to compare this tool with others and weigh pros and cons.
1. As discussed in the article, due to training sets or methodology, these systems are poor at distinguishing non-Caucasian faces. Or at least poor relative to a human looking at the image and the person together.
2. Police (though not just them) have an unfounded trust in the machines.
3. Police take this unfounded trust and push through arrests before they realistically should (like in the opening story of the article).
4. People arrested for felonies are fucked in the US. It can take years to get your record expunged. Until then your name shows up in lots of searches, you can lose licenses to conduct some kinds of business (or be unable to obtain them). (Expunging can also be very expensive.)
You may not mind innocent people being caught up in the dragnet, but as a society we probably should care a lot more than we do.