A black American was wrongfully arrested because of police use of facial recognition technology. This is the first such error documented in the United States, according to a complaint filed Wednesday, June 24 in Detroit.
In early January, Robert Williams spent 30 hours in detention because software had deemed the photo of his driver's license and the image of a watch thief captured by surveillance cameras identical, according to the complaint.
He had been arrested and handcuffed in front of his house, in the presence of his wife and two daughters, ages 2 and 5. "How can I explain to two little girls that a computer was wrong but that the police still listened to it? " wrote Robert Williams in a column published by the Washington Post.
According to his account, after a night in a cell, officers asked him if he had ever been to a Detroit jewelry store, and showed him two blurry photos of a black man.
35% error rate for black women
"I took the paper and put it close to my face saying" I hope you don't think all black men are the same. " The police looked at each other and one said "the computer must have been wrong" ", he says.
Facial recognition technology, used for several years by various police services in the United States without a federal legal framework, is accused of being unreliable in the identification of minorities, especially black or Asian.
According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the error rate is 35% for black women. While this ethnic bias linked to databases comprising more white models than black is known, no specific case of error has so far been documented.
Since the death of George Floyd, a black 40-year-old asphyxiated by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 28, the Americans have demanded, during demonstrations throughout the country, police reforms and the militants advocate in particular for the abandonment of this technology .
Several companies, anxious to respond to this mobilization, such as Amazon, IBM or Microsoft, have suspended the sale of this identification software to the police, until clear rules have not been set.
Boston city council on the Atlantic coast on Wednesday voted to ban city officials from using facial recognition, making it the second largest city in the world after San Francisco to make the decision.
