
Detroit police chief admits facial recognition is wrong “96% of the time” - furcyd
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/detroit-police-chief-admits-facial-recognition-is-wrong-96-of-the-time/
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rurban
Unscientific. The best facial recognition is accurate 98%-99.9% of the time.
There are minor known problems with blacks (~2% worse), bad lighting, bad
cameras, but big problems with small databases to compare against. There are
yearly vendor tests and challenges. E.g
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_Recognition_Grand_Challen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_Recognition_Grand_Challenge)
Latest winners are all in the 99.9% ballpark, not 4%.

If the Detroit police has no faces to compare against and the image quality is
crap, it's certain that their success rate cannot be much better than 10%.

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sukilot
4% success rate is fantastic for one tool bring the perpetrator to the
attention of investigators.

The problem is in abusing the tool as in the watch theft case.

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slezyr
More like 96% distraction.

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setr
Depends on how many results it brings you -- if it declares 10 candidate
matches, and 1 is correct, then its still 90% wrong -- but still very useful.

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suryabeep
And it ruins the lives of the 9 incorrect matches, because of the way the
legal system works in America. I'd say that that's 9 lives too many.

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hevelvarik
Is this life ruining thing a thing, or is it a generalizing of that episode
that hit the news a week ago, or is it an instantiation of the current
zeitgeist according to which there is no ill that can’t be associated with US
law enforcement

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imtringued
I don't know why but for some reason US law enforcement always manages to find
a way to maximize harm.

When you give them less lethal weapons what happens is that they just use them
in every possible situation and often they increase lethality by aiming at
vulnerable body parts or shoot them from a very short distance. What they
really should do is show some restraint and not let themselves get provoked
easily.

Facial recognition is basically ending in the same situation. 96% failure rate
means you have a lead but not evidence and only get to interview people for
more clues. Instead they just arrest the leads because the wanted criminal
could attack during the interview or flee afterwards.

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jqpabc123
It's simply not realistic to expect highly accurate facial recognition from
public surveillance cameras.

Resolution is often lacking, angles are distorted, illumination is poor,
people are moving, features are hidden or blurred, people wear hats, etc.,
etc..

Mug shots, maybe. Frame grabs from public surveillance, not very likely.

