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Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

grandforksherald.com

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

#91

Post by jmyeet »

We are rapidly becoming a world where every person is one inscrutable LLM decision from having their life ruined with no recourse.

This type of incident isn't new and is only going to get worse. The problem is our governments are doing absolutely nothing about it. I'll give two examples:

1. Hertz implemented a system where they falsely reported cars as being stolen. People were arrested and went to jail for rental cars that were sitting in the Hertz lot. Hertz ultimately had to pay $168 million in a settlement [1]. That's insufficient. If I, as an ordinary citizen, make a false police report that somebody stole my car I can be criminally charged. And rightly so. People should go to jail for this and it will continue until they do. These fines and settlements are just the cost of doing business; and

2. The UK government contracted Fujitsu to produce a new system for their post offices. That system was allowed to produce criminal charges for fraud that were completely false. People committed suicide over this. This went on for what? A decade or more? But resuted in a parliamentary inquiry and settlements. It's known as the British Post Office scandal [2]. Again, people should go to jail for this.

The choice we as a society face is whether to have automation improve all of our lives by raising everyone's standard of living and allowing us to do less work and less menial work or do we allow automation to further suppress wages so the Epstein class can be slightly more wealthy.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

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

#92

Post by mirekrusin »

neaden wrote: post #6

I hate this headline (not blaming submitter). Police incompetence and negligence jailed her for months and left her stranded in a North Dakota winter. The AI is no more responsible than the cars and airplanes they used. Edit: this is in reference to the original headline "AI error jails innocent grandmother for months in North Dakota fraud case" not the revised title that it was changed to.

Brave police officers wanted to show us all the dangers of AI slop.

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

#93

Post by hrimfaxi »

superkuh wrote: post #15
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.

> https://archive.is/yCaVV When I load this URL I get "One more step Please complete the security check to access" and I cannot get past the archive.is computational paywall. But the guardian article actually has text! Thanks.

That's a common issue if you use cloudflare dns.

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

#95

Post by irishcoffee »

causal wrote: post #39
anigbrowl wrote: post #18

It is an AI error, but also an error on the part of the cops, the prosecutors, the judge, and the county sheriff (who is responsible for the jail inmates). I hope everyone involved in this travesty is sued into oblivion and unable to hide behind their immunity defenses. Facial recognition should never be the sole basis for a warrant.

This x1000. We need to suspend this shared fiction that AI has any agency. Only humans can be responsible. Full stop.

[flagged]

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

#96

Post by kawsper »

Aardwolf wrote: post #14

This reminds me of the British Post Office Scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

If you can get your hands on it, I recommend the 4 episode BAFTA-winning mini-series about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Bates_vs_The_Post_Office

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

#97

Post by abduhl »

mothballed wrote: post #89
abduhl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit hyperbolic and the exaggerations really undermine what I think is your broader point (that there is rarely recourse when you're held for short to moderate amounts of time). It is hard for me to believe that someone was held for 16 years on civil contempt without due process or that someone was held for half a year without due process after being deemed dangerous. The reason that is hard for me to believ…

Yeah it's "due process." In civil contempt the judge is a witness and prosecutor in the very "process" they're judging. That's the most perverted form of due process imaginable. A judge should have to recuse themselves if they are acting as witness to the supposed infraction.

Civil contempt isn't some roving criminal charge that jumps out of the jury box randomly. It's meant to make somebody comply with a court order. Anybody in civil contempt holds the keys to the jailhouse door in their own hands, all they have to do is comply.

This statement should make you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable because it is a pure expression of the power of the state. But it's still due process.

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

#98

Post by obviouslynotme »

whack wrote: post #51

> According to the court documents, the Fargo detective working the case then looked at Lipps' social media accounts and Tennessee driver's license photo. In his charging document, the detective wrote that Lipps appeared to be the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle and color. > Once they were in hand, Fargo police met with him and Lipps at the Cass County jail on Dec. 19. She had already been i…

It's not. This is just an acceleration in the unraveling of society facilitated by AI. As someone whose childhood included so many "robots will kill humans" books and movies, I am flabbergasted that the AI apocalypse will be dumb humans overtrusting faulty AI in important matters until everything falls apart.

Most humans cannot distinguish AI from actual intelligence. When you combine that with bureaucrats innate tendency to say, "Computer said so," you end up with bizarre situations like this. If a person had made this facial match, another human would have relentlessly jeered him. Since a computer running AI did it, no one even cared to think about it.

Computers are wildly dangerous, not because of anything innate but because of how humans act around them.

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

#99

Post by blitzar »

whack wrote: post #51

> According to the court documents, the Fargo detective working the case then looked at Lipps' social media accounts and Tennessee driver's license photo. In his charging document, the detective wrote that Lipps appeared to be the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle and color. > Once they were in hand, Fargo police met with him and Lipps at the Cass County jail on Dec. 19. She had already been i…

computer said yes

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

#100

Post by janalsncm »

jauer wrote: post #5

AI or not, it's unconscionable that victims of compulsory legal processes by way of mistaken identity are not made whole.

> In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial

This is from the Sixth Amendment. Where the rubber hits the road is what “speedy” means.

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