Hundreds of Americans have been arrested after being connected to a crime by facial recognition software, a Washington Post investigation has found, but many never know it because police seldom disclose use of the controversial technology. Police departments in 15 states provided records documenting their use of facial recognition in more than 1,000 criminal investigations over the past four years. According to arrest reports and interviews with people who were arrested, authorities routinely failed to inform defendants about their use of the software, denying them the opportunity to contest the results of an emerging technology that is prone to error, especially when identifying people of color. The records show that officers often obscured their reliance on the software in public reports, saying that they identified suspects “through investigative means” or that a human source such as a witness or police officer made the initial identification.
In Evansville, Ind., police said they identified a man who beat up a stranger on the street from his tattooed arms, long hair and previous jail booking photos. In Pflugerville, Tex., police said they learned the name of a man who helped steal $12,500 in merchandise from Ulta Beauty “by utilization of investigative databases.”
Both suspects were identified with the aid of facial recognition, information that was never shared with the accused. The Post requested records from more than 100 police departments that have acknowledged using facial recognition; only 30 provided arrest records from cases in which they used the software. Some agencies said they use it to identify potential leads but never make an arrest based solely on a computer match, so they’re not required to disclose it to the people arrested. Defense lawyers and civil rights groups argue that people have a right to know about software that identifies them in a criminal investigation, especially a technology that has led to false arrests. The reliability of the tool has been successfully challenged in a handful of court cases, leading some defense lawyers to contend that police and prosecutors are intentionally trying to shield the technology from court scrutiny.
Comments