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Man sues Macy’s, saying false facial recognition match led to jail assault

Retailers increasingly are using facial recognition software to patrol their stores for shoplifters and other unwanted customers. But the technology’s accuracy is highly dependent on technical factors — the cameras’ video quality, a store’s lighting, the size of its face database — and a mismatch can lead to dangerous results.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240124124645/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/22/facial-recognition-wrongful-identification-assault/

Burn_The_Right , (edited )

Macy's, Sunglass Hut, Rite-Aid... We need a website with a list of the companies that falsely accuse their visitors of crimes. The public needs to know the dangers of shopping at these places.

Also, AI should be excluded as evidence of a crime. The results of any form of AI analysis should be forbidden in probable cause statements.

eran_morad ,

Fuck that, i want a list of all stores deploying facial recognition. I’ll take my money elsewhere, fuck you very much.

Burn_The_Right ,

Agreed. If a store uses facial recognition, it can only be to falsely accuse their visitors of crimes. The only possible outcomes of facial recognition are unreliable results and false accusations.

notannpc ,

That dude deserves a payday at the very least. Facial recognition isn’t reliable yet. And even when it is that shit should still be illegal to use as the sole justification in arrests. Do some god damn police work. Especially if the dude has an air tight alibi like BEING IN JAIL. It would take 5 minutes to confirm that.

MNByChoice ,

A man was sexually assaulted in jail

This kind of shit has to stop. The jailers must help held accountable. I understand this is difficult due to bad laws, but the laws need to change.

lolcatnip ,

Too bad half the political spectrum wants prisons to be as terrible as possible.

WHYAREWEALLCAPS ,

Yeah, that half would be perfectly fine with throwing them in a deep pit and forgetting they exist.

extant ,

I can't believe you would pass up an opportunity to say oubliette!

Ibex0 ,

Yeah, prison rape shouldn't exist.

pearsaltchocolatebar ,

Huh, it's surprising it's a white guy this time. I figured it was another case of racist facial recognition.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer ,

AI thinks all meat bags look alike.

Che_Donkey ,
@Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml avatar

Is this not a case of an unavailable accusers? In other words, Traffic Cams have time and again been overturned as unconstitutional because you have the right to face your accusers?

Pretty sure Tom from IT can rustle up a laptop to take to court but...Facial Recog. is some bullshit 1984 bullshit.

MegaUltraChicken ,
@MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world avatar

They did a lineup with the cashier too I believe. Just another example of eye witnesses being useless.

WHYAREWEALLCAPS ,

After experiencing my own false memories and how easy they came to me, I will never, ever trust an eyewitness account. Give me video proof or gtfo.

No one should trust another human's account as being 100% accurate and true. The only thing that's trustworthy are recordings from secure sources.

meat_popsicle ,

Video proof can be deepfaked now. We’ll need to have recordings capture public keys of people in frame so they can be verified as real or not.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Maybe the real criminal looked very much like this guy?

drislands ,

Not just that, according to his lawyers in the article, he was 2 thousand miles away when the robberies happened that he was "identified" as being at.

Petter1 ,

I don’t want to shop in stores that scan my face 🙊 time for some research.

AtmaJnana ,

Mask up

Petter1 ,

I think I just order anonymously to random PO box via dark net from now on 🤣

MegaUltraChicken ,
@MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world avatar

My favorite thing about the pandemic: anonymous in public anytime I want.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Don't shop in physical stores anymore?

Petter1 ,

Valid solution! (With the right internet privacy setup, of course)

TimLovesTech ,
@TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social avatar

Wild that you can base a whole case on what a photo AI thinks it is seeing. These programs at the very least should work like DNA or fingerprint matching and provide a percentage of its accuracy, not just that it finds some kinda close image in its database and everyone rolls with it. And it should need some other piece of evidence as well to back it up, it should never be the "best" part of a prosecutors case.

BearOfaTime ,

This is why traffic cams in the US have had issues for years, and most of them are run privately, and issue "civil fines".

Because "civil fines" (taxes, under another name, same as "civil fees") don't have the legal issues of receiving a ticket.

Tickets generally require interaction with an officer. Since cameras and their companies aren't officers, they can't generate a ticket/summons. So the gov end-runs this by using civil fees/fines, with the camera operators receiving upward of 85% of the fee.

And being a fee/fine, it's difficult to get out of, even if you're innocent and pursue it in court.

Of course, every jurisdiction is different, so it depends on the local legal structure.

QuadratureSurfer ,
@QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world avatar

To add onto this, here's a story about how someone who had their car stolen (and they could prove it) lost their initial objection to the charges from a red light camera.

The charges only dissappeared once the news got involved.
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-red-light-ticket-camera-illinois-car-stolen-theft/11677595/

MegaUltraChicken ,
@MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world avatar

With most digital forensic tools thats exactly what they do. There's a specific threshold that gives a match probability. It's designed as a way to point someone in a direction, not to confirm identity.

I can totally see cops using this as probable cause but it would get totally laughed out of a courtroom.

TexasDrunk ,

I can totally see cops using this as probable cause but it would get totally laughed out of a courtroom.

Should, not would. Get a backwards ass judge and it'll fly. Your life is already fucked by the time you appeal it.

aniki ,

Are we all gonna have to start wearing disruptive clothing to avoid our lives being destroyed by an algo with immunity?

Reverendender ,
@Reverendender@sh.itjust.works avatar

Are you not doing this already?/s

aniki ,

I do enjoy wearing a mask at points of major population centers still.

captainlezbian ,

Disruptive makeup as the new fashion trend would be cyberpunk as fuck

aniki ,

I seriously wish it would take off. The future should focus entirely on fucking all control structures.

TexasDrunk ,

I will never be as hardcore as you, but I like your spirit.

captainlezbian ,

The trick is we need styles that do it and look good enough to be worth it for people who aren’t nerds. In short now is the time for the high femme tech geeks to be bold, and experimental and make tech art that’s memetic.

TragicNotCute ,
@TragicNotCute@lemmy.world avatar

How about makeup?

https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/

dan1101 ,
@dan1101@lemm.ee avatar

Faulty software and people who don't operate it properly, this is going to cause a lot of problems in the coming years. I read another article about faulty Fujitsu auditing software in the UK that led to 400 postmasters being falsely accused of theft.

snekerpimp ,

Four suicides as well. They knew it was faulty as well. This has been a problem for a while.

Cowlitz ,

That shit was wild. It went on for so long and impacted so many people. At that point I have to think people were intentionally ignoring it. It ruined so many lives just to say "haha sorry, was a software glitch" when they could have investigated it at any point and definitely should have with the strange uptick in "embezzlement".

ikidd ,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

It was investigated. They opened an internal investigation and when it became obvious the investigator was going to blow it open, they cancelled the investigation 2 days before the report was going to come out.

Seriously, it's really looking like the entire board over several years should face jail time.

Ringmasterincestuous ,

Could be worse… could be government run, see robodebt in Australia lol

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A man was sexually assaulted in jail after being falsely accused of armed robbery due to a faulty facial recognition match, his attorneys said, in a case that further highlights the dangers of the technology’s expanding use by law enforcement.

Harvey Murphy Jr., 61, said he was beaten and raped by three men in a Texas jail bathroom in 2022 after being booked on charges he’d held up employees at gunpoint inside a Sunglass Hut in a Houston shopping center, according to a lawsuit he filed last week.

A representative of a nearby Macy’s told Houston police during the investigation that the company’s system, which scanned surveillance-camera footage for faces in an internal shoplifter database, found evidence that Murphy had robbed both stores, leading to his arrest.

The company said in a previous statement that it uses “facial recognition in conjunction with other security methods in a small subset of Macy’s stores with high incidences of organized retail theft and repeat offenders.”

But the technology’s accuracy is highly dependent on technical factors — the cameras’ video quality, a store’s lighting, the size of its face database — and a mismatch can lead to dangerous results.

The Federal Trade Commission last month said the pharmacy chain Rite Aid had misused its facial recognition system in a way that led to shoppers being falsely accused of theft, including in confrontations with police.

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