Changing Realities
The debate over facial recognition technology in Detroit is a national issue. NBC reported early in the week:
This debate has put Detroit at the center of an escalating national conversation about high-tech crime-fighting tools that are promoted as beneficial to the public but may lead to more intrusive forms of government surveillance. Facial recognition is a policing tool that was uncontroversial two years ago but is now so contentious that several cities, including San Francisco, have preemptively banned its use by police, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, recently called for a national ban.
Also this week, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib criticized the Detroit Police and their use of the technology. Representative Tlaib has been leading the national conversation opposing this technology and recently cosponsored a bill called “No Biometric Barriers 5 of Housing Act of 2019 prohibiting the use of “biometric recognition technology “ in federal housing programs.
The Detroit Police have responded to the growing criticism with Chief James Craig tweeting out “Abolishing the use of Facial Recognition protects only one group of individuals — VIOLENT CRIMINALS.”
National writers, critical of the department’s position, immediately identified what is behind these responses. They argue the Mayor and police are advocating that the ends justify the means.
This philosophy is at the heart of the Mayor and Police desire to push dangerous technologies. And this is why we all need to object to it. History tells us that police quite simply cannot be trusted to limit their own power. Contemporary actions underscore this.
While the debate of facial recognition technologies raged in Detroit, the New York Times published a seemingly unrelated article by Nicholas Bogel- Burroughs on an incident in Portland Oregon. There, in efforts to find a suspect in a bank robbery, police resorted to Photoshop for help. He reports:
The police used editing software to remove the tattoos from the picture of the suspect, Tyrone Allen, and presented his revised face to four tellers, at least two of whom identified him as the bank robber. Prosecutors in Portland said Mr. Allen may have applied makeup before the robberies and that investigators simply mimicked the possible disguise.
The article goes on to document that the use of photoshop is a common practice around the country. Some of the nation’s largest police departments regularly use Photoshop and other editing tools in cases where suspects have a distinguishing tattoo, scar, bruise or other mark.
While there may be good reasons for this from the police perspective, the potential of misidentification is obvious.
When old technologies like photoshop are so easily used to alter reality, always in the name of good by police, we need to be especially cautious when police ask for additional powers of surveillance and identification.
Additionally, we have seen the abuse of these technologies by police to arrest undocumented people and to identify community activists.
Over and over again, Chief Craig has promised to limit the use of this technology. But the harsh reality is that Chief Craig will not always be in charge. Individuals, whatever their intentions, come and go in policing. But the power of the police remains. As Amy Doukoure, an attorney for the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says , it’s hard to believe him. “We can't rely on them to do the right thing, because they didn't do the right thing in the first place,” she said.
We need to reject the use of intrusive technologies of control and put our efforts and resources behind strategies that make life in our communities better for all.