by Michael Dean Thompson
Facial recognition technology (FRT) corporations and the policing agencies that use them continue to jeopardize American civil liberties. While their advocates point to a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study that reported the best systems managed a high degree of accuracy using high quality images, they ignore how when comparing thousands of “probe” images against millions or more database images, the real number of failures (both false matches and missed matches) grows to a very large quantity. Moreover, they fail to mention how the largest provider of FRT to cops, ClearView AI, remains an unproven technology - its failure rate has yet to be tested outside the company.
What we do see, however, is that among the first seven people known to be wrongfully accused, six were Black. This includes Robert Williams who was arrested based on grainy surveillance video, against which they matched an expired driver’s license photo. The very best algorithms for FRT have a significantly greater failure rate for Black and Asian people. They perform their worst with Black women. Add the element of low quality images, and the odds of a correct match spiral downward. Yet, cops continue to ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Considering all the bad press surrounding Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) and its high-profile failures, a recent report from the Government Accountability Office found that the seven agencies believed to be the largest consumers of commercial facial recognition services are doing so without training, accountability, or transparency. Strangely, while all seven agencies surveyed each have their own policies regarding personally identifiable information (PII), such as facial images, all seven of the agencies failed to fully comply with them. The report sadly did nothing to alleviate the justifiable fears of Americans concerned about civil rights abuses.
Historical Background
Facial Recognition Technology provides yet another dimension to identifying people. It can be thought of as operating in two modes. The first is Verification, where companies like Apple use FRT to verify that a user is authorized to access a system or place. For verification, the software only needs to check a provided facial image against a known, authorized image. In that sense, verification is a one-to-one comparison. In contrast, an FRT running in Identification mode must compare a given image (a “probe” image) to a vast number of database images that could number in the billions. Obviously then, a ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
The convergence of web technologies with handheld computing devices and high-capacity, inexpensive storage has led to a remarkable new era of corporate data collection most people would find shockingly invasive. Criminal Legal News has covered how, in the process of plumbing the depths of available corporate data, cops have exposed innocent Americans to precisely the kinds of general warrant dragnets the framers of the Constitution sought to prevent. And as the number of devices tracking consumer behavior increases alongside their functionality, the number of potential surveillance vectors goes up as well. Criminal Legal News previously covered the potential of push notifications providing fodder for general searches. Thanks to Senator Wyden (D., Ore.), we now know how cops are doing just that.
Our insight into the issue began when Sen. Wyden wrote a letter to the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) about the ways foreign governments were demanding Google and Apple handover user data. In addition to collecting data that describes communications such as keyword searches and app use (a.k.a. metadata) as well as location data, these foreign governments were demanding information about push notifications.
Much like location data, push notifications are passive events from a user’s ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Cellphones must be able to continue providing service when connected to networks other than those to which their owners subscribe. The ability to roam beyond the subscriber’s borders without interruption of service is available because network providers across the globe have agreed to some basic communication ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Corporations collect all kinds of data about their customers with few rules about what they can do with it. Often, these collections come with assurances that the data will be de-identified before being sold to additional parties such as data brokers. One meaningful example is the ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Facial Recognition Technology (“FRT”) misuses continue to pop up in the media. In August of 2023, police went to the home of Porcha Woodruff and arrested her for carjacking in front of her daughters. The kicker in her story was that she was eight months pregnant. ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
There is a tendency within the human brain to settle on the first solution even when another, better solution is available. Automated facial recognition (“AFR”) systems can exacerbate the problem simply by the fact that they are designed to address an area where most of humanity ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
In 2016, a lone shooter shot 12 Dallas police officers, killing five. Police eventually cornered the man in a parking garage. He had nowhere to go, but after five hours, the cops were eager to end it. So, they strapped the plastic explosive known as C4 ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Google is the unrivaled search giant, and its Android is the second most widely used cellphone operating system in the U.S. Their additional offer of free software is all designed to leverage what they know about you and increase the number of opportunities to present highly ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab investigated weaknesses in the manner with which cellphones and their locations are passed from tower to tower. What they found was that it was remarkably easy for a state agency, telephone company, and others to track cellphones using the archaic ...
