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Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

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Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#141

Post by kelnos »

pj_mukh wrote: post #119
rglover wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is this the fault of AI? It flagged a possible match. A live human detective confirmed it. Because we're seeing the first instances of what reality looks like with AI in the hands of the average bear. Just like the excuse was "but the computer said it was correct," now we're just shifting to "but the AI said it was correct." Don't underestimate how much authority and thinking people will delegate to machines. N…

I'm sorry but this is a piss-poor excuse. When I Claude code broken features, I'm responsible 100%. Why are cops not treated the same way? OP is right, AI is totally irrelevant in this story. If the point is "cops can't be trusted". Why do they have GUNS?! AI is the least of your problems. I feel like I'm going crazy with this narrative.

I mean, this is the USA we're talking about. Cops are given huge authority over everyone else, with poor accountability. AI just lets them pretend to be even less accountable. And by "pretend" I of course mean "get away with it".

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#142

Post by kelnos »

pear01 wrote: post #127
pj_mukh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this is a piss-poor excuse. When I Claude code broken features, I'm responsible 100%. Why are cops not treated the same way? OP is right, AI is totally irrelevant in this story. If the point is "cops can't be trusted". Why do they have GUNS?! AI is the least of your problems. I feel like I'm going crazy with this narrative.

It's called qualified immunity. Many support its repeal. I hope you join them, and convey the same to your local representatives and candidates. Until it is reformed few if any officers or administrators of criminal justice in the United States will ever feel any type of accountability. Short of video evidence of blatant gun to the back of the head style homicide qualified immunity means most law enforcement official…

> Many support its repeal.

There's nothing to repeal. Qualified immunity is a doctrine that the judicial branch made up out of thin air, with no legislative backing.

But agreed, we need legislatures to write laws that expressly hold police accountable, and declare that they are not shielded from liability when things go wrong due to their own failures and negligence.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#143

Post by kelnos »

Jtsummers wrote: post #90
blagie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. https://abovethelaw.com/2016/02/criminally-yours-indicting-a... You can be arrested, indicted, and held in jail on pretrial, and there is literally no recourse. There are many other ways jail can happen without due process. Where I live: * Civil contempt. Absolutely immunity. No due process. Record is about 16 years. Having a bad day? Judge can toss you in jail. * "Dangerous." Half a year. No due process. He-sa…

I don't know what you're responding to, but I don't think it's my comment. Qualified immunity protects individuals, not departments, from liability. The particular thread (in this thread) that I was responding to: >> I hope she wrings at least several million dollars out of the government. > With all the lovely qualified immunity doctrine? That's wishful thinking. I was responding to the claim that qualified immunity…

The GP seems to be suggesting that there's no recourse at all, usually. You might bring suit against a police department or LE agency, but you'll fail to find any relief there. True that qualified immunity only protects individuals, but there's a raft of other things that makes it hard to get a judgement against a police department, too.

I think there's probably one major exception: civil rights violation investigations. But even then, the people doing the investigating seem to be biased toward the LEOs.

The GP's linked article doesn't seem to even talk about this, so not sure why that's there.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#144

Post by _DeadFred_ »

wvenable wrote: post #124
rpcope1 wrote: post #10

There's no way this isn't a slam dunk case to sue the piss out of the Fargo Police, probably the US Marshals and maybe other orgs. The woman in the surveillance phone clearly looks way younger, among the many other obvious signs this woman didn't do it. I hope she wrings at least several million dollars out of the government.

It literally doesn't matter -- you're focused on the wrong thing. She could be that woman's exact twin and it wouldn't matter. Spending six months in jail and losing your house, your car, and your dog with the flimsiest of evidence is ridiculous.

'you can beat the wrap but not the ride' has been a pop culture reference in the US since the 1940s. Our society wants/supports the ability for this to be inflicted at police/court whim on people.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#145

Post by gosub100 »

jawns wrote: post #123

John Bryant, aka The Civil Rights Lawyer, recently did a piece about a similar case of mistaken identity. The consequences weren't as severe, but the willingness to trust the AI over any other evidence was the same: https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/2026/03/11/ai-software-tell... In the video, it shows a police officer blindly trusting a casino's AI software, even when a cursory investigation should have given any rea…

posting the video directly for those who prefer that format

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPUBXN2Fd_E

as an aside how small the world is: I know-a-guy who knows-that-guy.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#146

Post by kelnos »

vkou wrote: post #46
theLiminator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off of taxpayer money sadly. Imo we really need a fix for this. When cops are grossly negligent the money should come out of their aggregate pension fund (or at least partially).

There is a fix to it. Elect people who will hold them accountable. As long as you keep electing clowns that let the police do whatever they want, the police will... Do whatever they want.

I'm usually a big supporter of labor unions, but police unions in the US generally have an outsized amount of power, and even when mayors etc. want to hold police accountable, the union ends up bending the mayor over a barrel.

I'm not sure what the solution is here. Forbid police from unionizing? That would probably have some bad consequences too.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#147

Post by [deleted] »

rpcope1 wrote: post #10

There's no way this isn't a slam dunk case to sue the piss out of the Fargo Police, probably the US Marshals and maybe other orgs. The woman in the surveillance phone clearly looks way younger, among the many other obvious signs this woman didn't do it. I hope she wrings at least several million dollars out of the government.

[deleted]

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#148

Post by ifh-hn »

Just reading the headline I said to myself: bet this is in America.

Every time I see something like this I can never quite believe this sort of stuff happens. Complete, life ruining incompetence, with no consequences for the idiots that caused this to happen. Ignoring the AI input, which to me has nothing to do with this (it was used as a tool to identify a potential suspect), this woman went to jail for 5 months on the opinion of someone with no other evidence. Only in America.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#149

Post by vkou »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #125
vkou wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite this being something practically everybody wants, No, everybody does not want police accountability. Half the population will fall on a grenade to prevent that. They know that the purpose of the police is to keep the undesirables in line, and they never envision that they will ever fall in that category. The brutality is the point for them.

oh, i generally don't disagree with you on that point; i specifically meant that when presented with the question "do you want your tax dollars to pay for police liabilities?" the answer is probably almost always "no".

Sure. But when you ask "Do you want the police to be unable to do their job and live in a lawless hellscape ran by gangbangers and ISIS cartels?, the answer is also 'No.'

The problem is that the mass media sets the framing of acceptable discourse, and that mass media is in large part an ideological monoculture. And even when it's not, it is happy to present absolutely insane batshit lunacy as 'one of the two sides' of an issue.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#150

Post by nitwit005 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #3

https://archive.is/yCaVV - Archive link to get around the paywall. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/12/tennessee-gr... - Another article on this without a paywall. It's annoying that both articles are calling this AI error. This was human error, the police did the wrong thing and the people of Fargo will end up paying for this fuckup.

They're slapping AI in the title of any article that vaguely relates to get more clicks. This unfortunately works extremely well (see this thread)

Happens with a lot of topics of interest.

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