Facing Technology
This week the debate against surveillance technology in the hands of police took a deeply human turn. The ACLU of Michigan filed a complaint against the Detroit Police Department on behalf of Robert Williams, who was wrongfully identified, arrested at his home in front of his wife and daughters, and held in police custody for 30 hours. He was accused of stealing five watches from Shinola. He was released on bail, and ultimately the County Prosecutor, Kym Worthy, offered an apology saying, " This case should not have been issued based on the DPD investigation, and for that we apologize. Thankfully, it was dismissed on our office’s own motion. This does not in any way make up for the hours that Mr. Williams spent in jail.”
Mr. Williams’s account of the ordeal reflects his own anger and the callous treatment he received from the DPD. He also explains why he decided to pursue this case. Mr. Williams says, “ My daughters can’t unsee me being handcuffed and put into a police car. But they can see me use this experience to bring some good into the world. That means helping make sure my daughters don’t grow up in a world where their driver’s license or Facebook photos could be used to target, track or harm them.”
The story is making national and international news as it is the first documented case of facial recognition technology misidentifying a person, leading to his arrest. But those who have been fighting the use of this technology by police do not believe it is unusual. Joy Buolamwini, an MIT researcher and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League commented about the case saying, "This egregious mismatch shows just one of the dangers of facial recognition technology which has already been shown in study after study to fail people of color, people with dark skin more than white counterparts. She explained, "The threats to civil liberties posed by mass surveillance are too high a price. You cannot erase the experience of 30 hours detained, the memories of children seeing their father arrested, or the stigma of being labeled criminal."
Along with the shoddy police work, disrespect for civil liberties, and crude behavior documented by this case is an important comment, offered by a police officer during the interrogation of Mr. Williams. The officer showed Mr. Williams pictures of a large Black man in a red cap, taken by Shinola surveillance cameras. The officer sarcastically said, “So, that’s not you?” He then said, "So I guess the computer got it wrong, too.”
This comment goes to the heart of one of the main problems with using facial recognition technology. People tend to believe the machine rather than their own eyes. Technology, we think, is infallible. By the time the police were given a name and address, based on a facial recognition match with the state database of drivers licenses, they had convinced themselves that they were picking up a guilty man. The computer didn’t lie.
But as advocates against the use of this technology have been arguing for more than two years, computers do lie. Facial recognition technology is biased. Studies consistently show that facial recognition systems mis-identify people of color up to 100 times more often than white people.
Detroit does not need high-tech surveillance. Increasingly, we are asking if we need police. The majority of the City Council and the Police Commission have consistently ignored the warnings brought to them by community advocates. It is time for the Council and Commission to act on behalf of the people, or step aside.