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posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 02 2019, @03:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the think-of-the-children! dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

She Was Arrested at 14. Then Her Photo Went to a Facial Recognition Database.

The New York Police Department has been loading thousands of arrest photos of children and teenagers into a facial recognition database despite evidence the technology has a higher risk of false matches in younger faces.

For about four years, internal records show, the department has used the technology to compare crime scene images with its collection of juvenile mug shots, the photos that are taken at an arrest. Most of the photos are of teenagers, largely 13 to 16 years old, but children as young as 11 have been included.

Elected officials and civil rights groups said the disclosure that the city was deploying a powerful surveillance tool on adolescents — whose privacy seems sacrosanct and whose status is protected in the criminal justice system — was a striking example of the Police Department's ability to adopt advancing technology with little public scrutiny.

Several members of the City Council as well as a range of civil liberties groups said they were unaware of the policy until they were contacted by The New York Times.

Police Department officials defended the decision, saying it was just the latest evolution of a longstanding policing technique: using arrest photos to identify suspects.

"I don't think this is any secret decision that's made behind closed doors," the city's chief of detectives, Dermot F. Shea, said in an interview. "This is just process, and making sure we're doing everything to fight crime."


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:15AM (2 children)

    by legont (4179) on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:15AM (#874931)

    The solution was there for a very long time. In general, people who have more authority should take more responsibility by law.

    A crime that is say 10 years of prison for a regular citizen should be mandatory life term for a cop. Right now it is exactly the opposite.

    Second, armed police should have no right to be afraid. Any claim "I shoot him because I felt threatened" should result in capital punishment for the cop. She has no right to shoot or use any force because she is afraid. That' the price for being a cop (or a solder for that matter).

    Third. Any crime committed by a cop, his boss should be punished and punished more than the cop in question. 10 years for a cop? 25 for his super mandatory.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @12:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @12:51PM (#875090)
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:54PM

    by RS3 (6367) on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:54PM (#875124)

    Strong stance and I agree on all points.

    ...Any claim "I shoot him because I felt threatened"...

    What bugs me about the videos we've all seen is that the cop could back off, hide behind the cop car or something, but no, they approach the suspect and start shooting right away. I'd love to be in a court and ask: "why did you approach the suspect if you were afraid? Why didn't you retreat, hide, and wait for backup?"

    My core concern is that most cops select the job because they look forward to shooting someone someday, and there's plenty of evidence of them having sports team like rallies with someone coaching them to "get out there and crack some heads."

    Time to move to a more civilized country...