Police Display Dangerously Inept Use of Premature Technology, Shocker

Jennifer Henderson, reporting for CNN:

Porcha Woodruff, 32, was home around 8 a.m. on February 16, helping her 6- and 12-year-olds get ready for school when six Detroit police officers arrived at her door with an arrest warrant for carjacking and robbery, the complaint states.

“Are you kidding, carjacking? Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?” she asked them, the lawsuits says. Still, she was handcuffed, taken to jail and booked, it states.

Woodruff later learned she was implicated in the alleged incident after the facial recognition software hit as well as the carjacking victim allegedly identified her in a lineup of six photos that included her mugshot from a 2015 arrest, the complaint states. Police had access to her current driver’s license photo issued in 2021, but used the older photo, according to the complaint.

This is seriously concerning, especially for black people. We know that police officers go out of their way to respect the rights of black Americans /s, but photography companies have long been biased towards taking photos of white people, often making black people appear far too dark and featureless in photographs, which necessarily makes artificial intelligence models less capable of identifying them accurately in images.

Aside from that, ALL citizens of the world should have strong concerns about governments using technology like this for law enforcement purposes. It’s chillingly dystopian.