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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 30 2020, @08:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the misidentified? dept.

AWS Facial Recognition Platform Misidentified Over 100 Politicians As Criminals:

Comparitech's Paul Bischoff found that Amazon's facial recognition platform misidentified an alarming number of people, and was racially biased.

Facial recognition technology is still misidentifying people at an alarming rate – even as it's being used by police departments to make arrests. In fact, Paul Bischoff, consumer privacy expert with Comparitech, found that Amazon's face recognition platform incorrectly misidentified more than 100 photos of US and UK lawmakers as criminals.

Rekognition, Amazon's cloud-based facial recognition platform that was first launched in 2016, has been sold and used by a number of United States government agencies, including ICE and Orlando, Florida police, as well as private entities. In comparing photos of a total of 1,959 US and UK lawmakers to subjects in an arrest database, Bischoff found that Rekognition misidentified at average of 32 members of Congress. That's four more than a similar experiment conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) – two years ago. Bischoff also found that the platform was racially biased, misidentifying non-white people at a higher rate than white people.

These findings have disturbing real-life implications. Last week, the ACLU shed light on Detroit citizen Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, who was arrested after a facial recognition system falsely matched his photo with security footage of a shoplifter.

The incident sparked lawmakers last week to propose legislation that would indefinitely ban the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement nationwide. Though Amazon previously had sold its technology to police departments, the tech giant recently placed a law enforcement moratorium on facial recognition (Microsoft and IBM did the same). But Bischoff says society still has a ways to go in figuring out how to correctly utilize facial recognition in a way that complies with privacy, consent and data security.

Previously:

(2020-06-28) Nationwide Facial Recognition Ban Proposed by Lawmakers
(2020-06-11) Amazon Bans Police From Using its Facial Recognition Software for One Year
(2020-06-10) Senator Fears Clearview AI Facial Recognition Use on Protesters
(2020-06-09) IBM Will No Longer Offer, Develop, or Research Facial Recognition Technology
(2020-05-08) Clearview AI to Stop Selling Controversial Facial Recognition App to Private Companies
(2020-05-08) How Well Can Algorithms Recognize Your Masked Face?
(2020-04-18) Some Shirts Hide You from Cameras
(2020-04-02) Microsoft Supports Some Facial Recognition Software
(2020-03-23) Here's What Facebook's Internal Facial Recognition App Looked Like
(2020-03-21) How China Built Facial Recognition for People Wearing Masks
(2020-03-13) Vermont Sues Clearview, Alleging 'Oppressive, Unscrupulous' Practices
(2020-02-28) Clearview AI's Facial Recognition Tech is Being Used by US Justice Department, ICE, and the FBI
(2020-02-24) Canadian Privacy Commissioners to Investigate "Creepy" Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI
(2020-02-06) Clearview AI Hit with Cease-And-Desist from Google, Facebook Over Facial Recognition Collection
(2020-01-30) Facebook Pays $550M to Settle Facial Recognition Privacy Lawsuit
(2020-01-29) London to Deploy Live Facial Recognition to Find Wanted Faces in a Crowd
(2020-01-22) Clearview App Lets Strangers Find Your Name, Info with Snap of a Photo, Report Says
(2020-01-20) Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai Calls for AI Regulations
(2020-01-17) Facial Recognition: EU Considers Ban of up to Five Years
(2019-12-14) The US, Like China, Has About One Surveillance Camera for Every Four People, Says Report
(2019-12-11) Moscow Cops Sell Access to City CCTV, Facial Recognition Data
(2019-12-07) Proposal To Require Facial Recognition For US Citizens At Airports Dropped
(2019-12-03) Homeland Security Wants Airport Face Scans for US Citizens

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 30 2020, @01:28PM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 30 2020, @01:28PM (#1014486) Journal

    Are you from Louisiana? Ohhh, I know that Chicago and other places have fraud really bad, but Louisiana and the Edwards clan probably rank among the most corrupt SOBs in the country. And, they continue to be elected, again and again. Ted Kennedy probably took lessons from the Edwards clan.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:26PM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:26PM (#1014526)

    First time I personally saw a politician get elected after getting out of jail was in Hialeah, Florida - but, yeah, it's everywhere.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @11:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @11:13PM (#1014762)

      Corruption is a mainstay of every government and will be with us always. I came to understand why this is so after reading "The Dictator's Handbook". Depressing.