In January, a faulty facial recognition match led to a Michigan man's arrest for a crime he did not commit, in what may be the first known case of its kind
Kashmir Hill / New York Times :
New York TimesKashmir Hill
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the origin point of a now well-documented pattern: the first known wrongful arrest built on a facial recognition match, reported by Kashmir Hill. At the time, it read as an anomaly — a single Michigan case where an algorithmic match was treated as sufficient grounds for arrest.
The arrested man and his family bear the direct cost: detention, legal defense, and the burden of disproving a charge generated by an algorithmic match he never knew was used against him.
Michigan police face immediate scrutiny over investigative practice — the case exposes that a facial recognition match alone was treated as probable cause rather than a lead requiring corroboration.
Second-order effects
Wrongly arrested plaintiffs are turning to lawsuits, as the New Jersey case shows, putting police departments and the vendors whose systems produced the matches on the defensive in court.
Other departments using facial recognition must now document how matches feed into warrants, since each new wrongful-arrest report — Georgia, Detroit — raises the litigation and reputational risk of the same workflow.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, facial recognition shifts from an uncontroversial investigative tool to one where 'match' and 'evidence' are legally distinguished, with courts and legislatures defining what corroboration an algorithmic identification requires before an arrest.
The accumulating cases — Michigan, New Jersey, Georgia, Detroit — build the public record that civil-liberties groups and regulators need to force disclosure rules and usage limits on law-enforcement biometric surveillance.
The trend: Facial recognition is moving from an unexamined police shortcut to a contested evidentiary practice, as each documented wrongful arrest converts a technical error rate into lawsuits, disclosure demands, and eventual usage rules.
In January, in the first known case of its kind, a man in Michigan was arrested for a crime he did not commit due to a flawed algorithmic facial recognition match. I told his story here: https://www.nytimes.com/...
“I never thought I'd have to explain to my daughters why Daddy got arrested. How does one explain to two little girls that a computer got it wrong, but the police listened to it anyway?” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
“I picked [a surveillance camera photo] up and held it to my face and told [the detective], 'I hope you don't think all Black people look alike.'” Though the case was dropped, Robert Williams says its effect is lasting. https://www.mprnews.org/...
I've said it before and I'm saying it again. You can't make software that impacts human lives without understanding the human lives you're impacting. No one is saying you have to be a scholar on all things race and socioeconomic BUT THE BARE MINIMUM CAN SAVE A LIFE. https://twitt…
“... Williams is the first known example of an American wrongfully arrested based on a false hit produced by facial recognition technology.” What about the times when these stories aren't reported or caught? What happens then? https://www.npr.org/...
Robert Williams' is the first known case of someone being wrongfully arrested because of a bogus face recognition match. If lawmakers don't act now to stop law enforcement use of this technology, he won't be the last. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Impact: In response to @KashHill's article, the Wayne County prosecutor's office said Williams could have the case & his PII expunged. “We apologize,” the prosecutor said in a statement, adding, “This does not in any way make up for the hours that Mr. Williams spent in jail.” htt…
Tech is coming online that will give law enforcement near-godlike powers, with limited oversight, transparency or accountability, & will be justified in the name of protecting kids, property, & more: https://www.nytimes.com/... beware “Innocent until software predicts you are gui…
#NEW: In a unanimous vote today, the Boston City Council bans the use of facial recognition technology by government and law enforcement officials. Boston is now the second-largest city in the U.S. to impose such a ban, following San Francisco.
Robert Julian-Borchak Williams was wrongfully arrested because racist facial recognition technology misidentified him for a crime he did not commit. We can't allow this to happen again. It's time to ban facial recognition technology for policing. https://www.nytimes.com/...
If anyone ever rocks up claiming to have a system that can identify criminal tendency from somebody's face, remind them that “Physiognomy” is completely debunked pseudoscience and no amount of spaffing computer power and AI at it is going to change that https://www.bbc.co.uk/...
To be clear, this is the first case where a wrongful arrest based on flawed facial recognition has been *proven*. There are plenty of other cases out there where it might have happened but police and prosecutors refused to subject systems to scrutiny https://twitter.com/...
Facial recognition fuels racist policing and facilitates life-altering harm. This is precisely why cities across America are banning it. The government shouldn't be allowed to use tech that makes us less safe and less free. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
a jaw-dropping and painful story - read all the way to the end (and extra props to @kashhill for just returning from maternity leave last week and immediately writing an absolute must-read) https://twitter.com/...
First wrong arrest due to flawed facial recognition system. Expect more, unless we halt FRT entirely or improve it drastically and regulate it strongly at the same time. https://twitter.com/...
I said it before it was blindly given more power than humans have, but I'll say it again: Ban facial recognition. Ban factional recognition; ban facial recognition. https://twitter.com/...
There is no made-for-TV CSI “enhance” feature for surveillance footage. Attempts to build such a fanastic feature are shockingly racist. Facial recog use in law enforcement is just a fancy new kind of structural racism. https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/... https://twi…