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Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

cnn.com

141–150 of 221 posts

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#141

Without even looking at the AI part, I have a single question: Did anybody investigate? That's it. Whether it's AI that flagged her, or a witness who saw her, or her IP address appeared on the logs. Did anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm. But that's not what happened, they saw the data and said "we got her". But this is the worst part of the story: > And after her o…

The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The incentive is to prosecte and prove the charges. Speaking from the experience of being falsely accused after calling 911 to stop a drunk woman from driving. The narrative they "investigated" was so obviously false, bodycam evidence directly contradicted multiple key facts. Officials are interested only seeking to prove the c…

There’s a judge down in Texas, Dallas area I believe, who is in social media a lot because he will excoriate prosecutors who bring bs in to his court room. He’s not soft on crime but hard on rights and process. If a defendant did the wrong thing, he will have the appropriate amount of sympathy, down to zero. At times he will tell them, we all know you got lucky here, do better. But he won’t let prosecutors slate by on garbage charges or statements or investigations by police. Which leads to my primary point at least for this discussion in particular:

To me the scariest part of this as a process is how many times (I’d casually estimate at least 75%) it is blindingly obvious that the prosecutor has not read the statement of charges or officer statements until everyone is in front of the judge. I get on one hand this judge seems to often be handling probable cause hearings but so many of these should never have resulted in any paperwork being turned in to the prosecution, let alone anyone having to show up in court.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The incentive is to prosecte and prove the charges. Speaking from the experience of being falsely accused after calling 911 to stop a drunk woman from driving. The narrative they "investigated" was so obviously false, bodycam evidence directly contradicted multiple key facts. Officials are interested only seeking to prove the c…

> The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The truth is much more complicated and involves politics. For example Seattle (and possibly other cities?) enacted a law that involves paying damages for being wrong in the event of bringing certain types of charges. But that has resulted in some widely publicized examples where the prosecutor erred by being overly cautious.

And then you have Florida who will bill you about $100 a day for finding yourself in a Florida jail, regardless of whether charges were dismissed, you were found not guilty or any such thing.

And to nobody’s surprise, failure to pay this bill is in itself a Class B felony…

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#144

So cops used AI to attempt to investigate a crime. But, there was no crime - the arrest was wrong. Why can cops excuse themselves here for delegating their responsibilities (protecting society, allegedly that is) onto software? AI may also be written by some corporations to "tweak" this or that, see this foreign-looking guy being more likely to be AI-investigated. This is like the movie Minority Report - but stupid.…

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Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed let out on Christmas Eve with no money 1000 miles from your homeland. Where your home was lost to foreclosure because one JUDGE did not look at the paperwork. There should be a way to personally sue somebody when they don't do their job. Protecting the innocent. The JUDGE failed badly here. Flimsy evidence would mean no warrant. Do your basic investigation please... Rubberstamping JUDGE caused this. Why are th…

TBF isn't it rather unreasonable that our system permits your home to be foreclosed while you're detained prior to a hearing? Also rather unreasonable to arrest someone who is clearly neither violent nor a flight risk. You could literally hold the trial via video conference at that point and there would be no downside.

At the risk of sounding like more of an anarchist (irony, autocorrect went with absurdist which isn’t entirely wrong either) than I might usually feel, that all depends on who you believe the system is for and works for? If you believe it’s “capitalism” as been so often proven, then it could be said that it’s entirely “reasonable”.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The truth is much more complicated and involves politics. For example Seattle (and possibly other cities?) enacted a law that involves paying damages for being wrong in the event of bringing certain types of charges. But that has resulted in some widely publicized examples where the prosecutor erred by being overly cautious.

And then you have Florida who will bill you about $100 a day for finding yourself in a Florida jail, regardless of whether charges were dismissed, you were found not guilty or any such thing. And to nobody’s surprise, failure to pay this bill is in itself a Class B felony…

That sounds absolutely terrifying.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed many important points. "The trauma, loss of liberty, and reputational damage cannot be easily fixed,” Lipps' lawyers told CNN in an email. That sounds a LOT like a statement you make for before suing for damages, not to mention they literally say "Her lawyers are exploring civil rights claims but have yet to file a lawsuit, they said." This lady probably just wants to go back to normal life and get…

The real problem here is she'll get money, who knows how much, but that ultimately does nothing to actually address the problems in the system. Effectively it just raises taxes to cover the cost of these failed prosecutions. Everytime one of these cases happens, a cop and a prosecutor should be out of a job permanently. Possibly even jailed. The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted, the…

> The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted

There is actually a federal register for LEOs that have been terminated for cause or resigned to avoid termination.

The police unions that operate in the jurisdictions that employ 70% of US police have negotiated into their CBAs that the register “cannot be used for hiring or promotional decisions”. Read into that what you will.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#148
This isn't the first time this month I've read about someone suffering consequences of mistaken identity after their facial recognition said they look like someone who committed a crime. I'm sure this is starting to happen at an alarming rate.

The fundamental problem is that among the 350 million people living in the United States, there are a lot of pairs of people who look pretty darn similar. It used to be impractical to ask a question like "who in the US looks like the person in this security footage", and so as a matter of practicality, once you found someone who looks like the suspect, you probably also have other evidence, even if it's pretty weak, linking them to the crime.

But with AI, you can ask "who in the US looks like this person", and so we need to re-calibrate what it means if all you know is that someone looks like a suspect. I am of the opinion that "looks like someone," in the absence of any other evidence, is reasonable suspicion, but not probable cause, that you are the person you look like. Reasonable suspicion is enough for the police to stop you on the street and ask for your ID, but not enough to arrest you. There are other data points that alone might not even be reasonable suspicion, but could be combined with "looks like someone" to make probable cause, such as "was near the place at the time the crime happened".

AI isn't really the problem, even whether or not the AI's determination that two people look alike is valid or reviewed by a human isn't the problem. The problem is assuming that because two people look alike they must be the same person, even if you have no other evidence of them being the same person.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#149
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "correct" way to use AI in order to avoid bad results. The only prudent approach is to assume all results are bad until proven otherwise. But this approach negates much of the incentive to pay for questionable results.

> The only prudent approach is to assume all results are bad until proven otherwise. As is true with results from people. > But this approach negates much of the incentive to pay for questionable results. I'm not sure that follows. Even the crack-addled human informant has always been paid for questionable results.

As is true with results from people.

People as untrustworthy as AI often fail to maintain their jobs.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The incentive is to prosecte and prove the charges. Speaking from the experience of being falsely accused after calling 911 to stop a drunk woman from driving. The narrative they "investigated" was so obviously false, bodycam evidence directly contradicted multiple key facts. Officials are interested only seeking to prove the c…

There needs to be consequences for shitty, procedure-ignoring police work. Period. Minimum 1 year of jail time for grossly wrongful arrests that could be avoided with standard procedure or investigation tactics that were not applied.

I agree with this sentiment but when you start punishing this sort of thing you create more incentive to cover it up. It's a tricky problem and I'm not sure there's a perfect solution.

What we really need is a change in police culture.

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