Live data from Hacker News

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

cnn.com

201–210 of 221 posts

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

#201
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally, I would be a bit more grim, but people love their animals. I pray even the staunchest authoritarian would see the injustice of losing a dog.

You're not aware of Noem killing her dog by shooting it in the face, lining up three horses and shooting them, while being proud of it all?

iirc the dog was a dangerous animal and had attacked people and animals uprovoked quite a few times. didnt hear about it so not sure about the horses, but typically people dont just execute horses when they aren't injured or at risk of living out a traumatic existence. who knows, media spins and all that jazz, but I wouldn't hesitate to end a liability of a dangerous dog or a horse in suffering that had no chance of recovery, however reluctant id feel in the moment

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

#202
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dynamite is a tool. But we don't hand it out to anyone who wants to play with it.

We used to until quite recently. Anybody could buy dynamite at the hardware store. We had to end this because of criminals using it to hurt people.

I remember my Dad yelling at me to "put the dynamite back in the truck" when I was a kid.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that Florida it’s to go ‘soft on “crime”’? That would fly in the face of almost all available evidence. I have extended family in Florida. The system absolutely can and does and will push the issue. There’s a reason that it’s a crime not to pay for your incarceration even if you have a finding of factual innocence against you.

Your family isn't sleeping under a bridge or whatever. Of course the system wants your money or the money of people on comparable economic footing you associate with. If you can work as a debt slave to the system it wants you to do that even if it means a never ending cycle of robbing peter to pay paul, sleeping on other people's couches, etc. The man sleeping under a bridge cannot, so the cops and the DA and everyon…

> The system doesn't want to manufacture yet another felony and then incarcerate someone for it out of thin air, that just costs the system more money.

You say this like Florida doesn't have both the most private prisons in the country, and the most inmates held in such facilities.

"The system" doesn't care. Florida has, repeatedly, shown a willingness to cut back on education and healthcare.

And private prisons have repeatedly been shown to be a hotbed of corruption.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The condition here being she was already arrested. You don't arrest someone first and then try to establish their alibi second. That would be an investigation which would be prior to getting a warrant which would allow you to arrest someone. You will never talk yourself out of an arrest, you might talk yourself out of an investigation. You can offer your story to the police but the fact that you did or what you said…

> but the fact that you did or what you said to them will not come into evidence in court. What?? Isn't it that everything you say can be used in court? Aren't interrogations and arrests recorded?

It can be used in court _against you_.

You're never going to get your statements made in an interrogation into the record as exculpatory evidence.

The purpose of the interrogation is to find _other crimes_ you are also guilty of and charge you with those.

The police are not going to build a case against you, arrest you, and then immediately try to destroy their own case.

There's some real Hollywood confusion here.

There are two legal issues here. First is fighting the false arrest. Your statements will not help you here. Second is a civil rights violation case. The police negligence, if it can be established, is the basis of your case.

In either scenario your stated alibi is not meaningful.

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> police unions ... test my support for the idea of unionization. I have even said in the past that I think public sector unions are especially important because their boss (the people) are the most capricious and malicious of all. Maybe we could find a way to put guardrails on what they could and could not negotiate into a contract. Wages, benefits, basic job environmental conditions, stuff like that -- okay. But ad…

It's not the police union's fault that there is literally zero pushback against them.

Somehow Teacher unions have near zero power but cops can collectively bargain for the right to murder people to get a paid vacation.

It isn't because they have a union. Most of them don't have more than a high school diploma and minimal training. You can replace them with ease. A strike shouldn't even be considered a threat. They often can't strike, and their normal threat is work to rule, ie follow the law.

It isn't the police union that keeps judges from throwing the book at cops. It isn't the police union that keeps 40% of the country rabidly insistent that gently reforming police would turn this country to ash. It isn't the union that forces them to die in car crashes far more often than they ever face lethal violence.

A union isn't magically powerful and never can be. The employer can always just replace the members. Funny how that keeps unions in check for such skilled jobs as Teachers and Bureaucrats and Nurses and ATC employees, but for people who usually have just a high school diploma and a few weeks of training suddenly it's impossible call the strike's bluff? I hear TSA bodies are desperate for work.

It's a narrative. Police unions are allowed to exist to encourage you to hate unions. Police unions have correctly identified that nobody even attempts to push back against them and are simply doing their job: Advocating for their members. You aren't required to accept a Union's terms. America is chock full of better trained private security that would be happy to scalp a police force.

Hell, police departments are often run by political candidates. Why don't the pro-union ones just get voted out by supposedly anti-union people?

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

#206
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially considering the judge is the only person involved in this who is completely immune from being sued.

Under qualified immunity cops are all but completely immune to being sued.

They really aren’t. Qualified immunity is probably too strong, but litigants get past it all the time.

On the other hand, judges have absolute immunity for actions taken in the course of their judicial duties.

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

#207
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if AI / shadow IT will change that. I doubt it. Computing has traditionally been all about math and logic. This is really all that a binary logic computer is capable of. When applied to this purpose, it can offer highly accurate results at very low cost. Current AI is an attempt to branch out from simply calculating into decision making. But it does so in the worst possible way --- using probability and stat…

Heh, I wasn't suggesting that AI would actually replace decision-making. Rather, I wonder whether attempts to use AI in this way would result in such publicly-embarassing and catastrophic outcomes that software engineers might decide to organize professional guardrails about it. I fully agree, this seems like a legal liability issue waiting to happen.

software engineers might decide to organize professional guardrails about it.

Engineering isn't the one creating the liability issue here --- marketing is.

And it starts with using the word "intelligence" to describe what an LLM does.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> police unions ... test my support for the idea of unionization. I have even said in the past that I think public sector unions are especially important because their boss (the people) are the most capricious and malicious of all. Maybe we could find a way to put guardrails on what they could and could not negotiate into a contract. Wages, benefits, basic job environmental conditions, stuff like that -- okay. But ad…

It's not the police union's fault that there is literally zero pushback against them. Somehow Teacher unions have near zero power but cops can collectively bargain for the right to murder people to get a paid vacation. It isn't because they have a union. Most of them don't have more than a high school diploma and minimal training. You can replace them with ease. A strike shouldn't even be considered a threat. They of…

What makes police unions different from other unions is cops have a lot more power to make life miserable for their political enemies. They have effectively a legal right to harass anyone they'd like.

The worst a teachers union can do is strike.

Cops can assault and murder people then claim self defense. It's unlikely another cop will arrest them, and it's unlikely a prosecutor will actually do their job in prosecuting them.

This sort of undue power is what enabled Joe Arpaio to setup a concentration camp. That's somewhat the extreme of what cops can do. And he did, eventually, get prosecuted for it (though he was pardoned). But that was literally after years of those sorts of stunts. [1]

I can guarantee that Arpaio isn't the only corrupt cop out there. He just got too much national attention which ultimately ended his career.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20101020184811/http://www.kpho.c...

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We already have administrative punishments for the police when they incorrectly assign blame and cause a public relations mess. Is the termination of your career and/or potential retraining and social embarrassment not already an incentive to cover up?

If the punishment fails to correct the behaviour, it is insufficient punishment or the wrong punishment. In this case, I'd say that individual punishments are the wrong tool to correct systemic behaviour. It should be career-ending for brass and prosecutors to be effective.

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

#210
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These dialogs always prompt me to chime in with my solution: make the police be self-insured, backed by their pension fund. The police today have zero incentive to serve the public, they have zero skin in the game and can literally get away with murder. Any time you hear the call for "law and order", that is the audience that supports the current system, because they like it like this.

> These dialogs always prompt me to chime in with my solution: make the police be self-insured, backed by their pension fund. I'm curious, what exactly do you mean by "self-insured"? (Is the idea to combine literal insurance underwriting for retirement planning with a monetary incentive system for ongoing work performance)?

They mean that penalties and restitutions for wrongful prosecutions and wrongful convictions should not come from taxpayer money but private insurance. Right now, police departments feel zero pain from judgements against them so they have no reason to structurally correct their behaviour.
Post reply on HN