Technology

Facial Recognition Tech Again Fingers The Wrong Person For The Job

From the 'Working as Expected?' dept.

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Face recognition technology. Man using smartphone for biometric facial identification. Abstract digital world with neon lines. Vector illustrationAs was always going to be the case with tech that can more reliably identify white middle-aged males than anyone else, another minority has been nabbed because of a facial recognition fuck up.

The only good news pertains to the city of Detroit and its law enforcement agencies, which are finally not the perpetrators in string of AI-enabled rights violations.

In this lawsuit [PDF], recently filed by Atlanta resident Randal Reid, the cop shop with the bad math resides in Georgia. Named in his filing (which is discussed but never linked to in this report from Click Orlando) are Jefferson Parish (LA) deputy Andrew Bartholomew and his chief, Sheriff Joseph Lopinto.

Yes, you read that right. An Atlanta, Georgia resident is suing Louisiana law enforcement officials over a wrongful arrest predicated on faulty facial recognition search results.

We covered this case at the beginning of the year, prior to Reid’s (inevitable) lawsuit. Detectives were trying to locate a suspect in a robbery of luxury purses from a consignment shop in Metarie, Louisiana. The tech deployed by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office (JPSO) suggested Randal Reid was the most likely suspect. This recommendation — as baseless as it was — was “adopted” by the Baton Rouge PD, which decided this unvetted computer opinion was the same thing as probable cause and secured an arrest warrant.

Reid was ultimately arrested by the locals. Officers in DeKalb County, Georgia arrested Reid based on this faulty warrant and held him for nearly a week before the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office “rescinded” the arrest warrant.

(Correctly) Surmising litigation was on the way, Sheriff Lopinto and his office refused to comment on the arrest or the AI searches leading to it. The warrant affidavit submitted to Judge Eboni Rose likewise did not say anything about the tech used to (mis)identify Reid as a criminal suspect.

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Lopinto and his underlings may have survived immediate scrutiny but they’re not going to be able to dodge this lawsuit… at least not immediately. Reid is joining several other black people suing government agencies over false positives that were treated as probable cause by officers too stupid or too lazy to wait until all the facts were in.

Quran’s lawsuit was filed Sept. 8 in federal court in Atlanta. It names Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto and detective Andrew Bartholomew as defendants.

Bartholomew, using surveillance video, relied solely on a match generated by facial recognition technology to seek an arrest warrant for Reid after a stolen credit card was used to buy two purses for more than $8,000 from a consignment store outside New Orleans in June 2022, the lawsuit said.

“Bartholomew did not conduct even a basic search into Mr. Reid, which would have revealed that Mr. Reid was in Georgia when the theft occurred,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit suggests the tech used by the Sheriff’s Office was none other than the ultra-infamous Clearview AI — the facial recognition tech company so morally bankrupt even other purveyors of this questionable tech are unwilling to associate themselves with it. That insinuation is drawn from purchase orders and invoices secured from the JPSO, which show the Sheriff’s Office first entered a contract with Clearview in 2019.

Even Clearview — as awful as it is — takes care to inform its law enforcement customers that search results should be considered a small part of an investigative whole, rather than probable cause capable of supporting a warrant.

Nonetheless, that’s what happened here. And it was aided by the investigator’s apparently deliberate decision to mislead the judge about the origin of this so-called lead. From the lawsuit:

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Defendant BARTHOLOMEW did not conduct even a basic search into MR. REID, which would have revealed that MR. REID was in Georgia when the theft occurred and has never been to the state of Louisiana.

Defendant BARTHOLOMEW’S warrant affidavit failed to disclose the fact that he relied exclusively on facial recognition technology. Instead, Defendant BARTHOLOMEW’S affidavit was intentionally misleading; it stated that MR. REID was identified as the suspect in the surveillance video by a “credible source” for whom no information was provided.

With any luck, both the JPSO detective and the tech itself will go on trial. But, considering cops hate talking about tech they consider to be “secret” despite reams of digital paper having already been published discussing this tech in detail, it’s more likely a speedy settlement will be headed Mr. Reid’s way. And while that will help this plaintiff, it won’t do much for future victims of this tech and incapable hands it’s been placed in.

Facial Recognition Tech Again Fingers The Wrong Person For The Job

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