Facial recognition case leads to new standards

Ruling on wrongful arrest suit sets stage for facial recognition software regulations

What you probably already know: Law enforcement across the U.S. has been using facial recognition software to aid in identifying criminals for nearly a decade, but a lawsuit in Detroit is about to rein in some of those uses.

Why? Robert Williams was arrested in 2020 after an old driver’s license photo was matched via facial recognition software to surveillance camera footage of a theft. He spent 30 hours in a Detroit jail, was charged with retail fraud and had to hire a lawyer before his charges were dropped. He then sued the city of Detroit, and was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

What it means: At least two other people were wrongfully arrested based on this software in Detroit, according to a piece in the New York Times, and all of them were Black. The ACLU has taken on facial recognition as a key focus, in large part due to the racial disparities in the systems used to test the technology.

What happens now? While police departments have blamed human error for the wrongful arrests, many critics say the technology can introduce errors into the justice system. Detroit is changing its policies on how it conducts photo lineups as a result of this case, including a different photo of the suspect than the one the software used when presenting the lineup to witnesses, and requiring disclosure when a facial search happened, as well as the age of the photo and if other photos of the same person did not match.

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