Techno-Tuesday: Open thread (Update)
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My company is migrating from a museum-worthy server system to a large corporation’s server system. AKA The Cloud. So far I must say that as a way to store things it seems fine. As a place to use the things that are stored, not so much. We’ll see.
Open thread.
Update: I wish programmers would stop running TheyAllLookAlik3 widgets on facial recognition software.
One morning in February, Porcha Woodruff, eight months pregnant, was helping her kids get ready for school when six Detroit police officers showed up at her door. According to a negligence lawsuit filed on Friday, Woodruff said she thought the officers were joking when they presented her with a warrant alleging robbery and carjacking. They weren’t, and arrested her. Woodruff, a Black woman, had been was charged in the carjacking by inaccurate results from facial recognition technology, which has a history of racist outcomes.
Woodruff has now filed a lawsuit against the city of Detroit, with her complaint against the city stating that she “was implicated as a suspect through a photo lineup shown to the victim of the robbery and carjacking, following an unreliable facial recognition match.” According to the suit, “Law enforcement’s reliance on facial recognition has led to wrongful arrests, causing humiliation, embarrassment and physical injury, as evident in this particular incident.”
You might think the police would check whether the suspect looked a little preggers, but you might also think that Santa is going to leave you a unicorn this Christmas. Instead, while Woodruff was being held she became dehydrated, which lowered her heart rate, and she also experienced stress-induced contractions. Fortunately, she and the baby were OK, but I hope she adds her ER bill to her claim against the city.
People of color are more likely to be misidentified by facial recognition technology than white people. Democracy Now noted that Woodruff is the first woman known to be falsely identified as a criminal suspect as a result of facial recognition technology. But there are at least five other documented cases of people who have been wrongfully arrested due to the technology, all of whom are Black.
There are still a few features in the system.
