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from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-y—oh-wait dept.
Facial recognition linked to a second wrongful arrest by Detroit police:
A false facial recognition match has led to the arrest of another innocent person. According to the Detroit Free Press, police in the city arrested a man for allegedly reaching into a person's car, taking their phone and throwing it, breaking the case and damaging the screen in the process.
Facial recognition flagged Michael Oliver as a possible suspect, and the victim identified him in a photo lineup as the person who damaged their phone. Oliver was charged with a felony count of larceny over the May 2019 incident. He said he didn't commit the crime and the evidence supported his claim.
The perpetrator, who was recorded in footage captured on a phone, doesn't look like Oliver. For one thing, he has tattoos on his arms, and there aren't any visible on the person in the video. When Oliver's attorney took photos of him to the victim and an assistant prosecutor, they agreed Oliver had been misidentified. A judge later dismissed the case.
[...] Late last month, Detroit Police Chief James Craig suggested the technology the department uses, which was created by DataWorks Plus, isn't always reliable. "If we were just to use the technology by itself, to identify someone, I would say 96 percent of the time it would misidentify," he said in a public meeting, according to Motherboard. From the start of the year through June 22nd, the force used the software 70 times per the department's public data. In all but two of those cases, the person whose image the technology analyzed was Black.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 21 2020, @03:20AM
Wow, we're quite in sync on all points. Well, we could do what our colonial rulers did- put them all in Australia. :) Big g'day grin to our Aussie brothers and sisters. :)
Part of me wishes I had gone into law and maybe politics. Anyway, we often hear about "the letter of the law" and "the spirit of the law". As I mentioned above, some people have too much power, such as judges. Which segues to...
Again as I mentioned above I may have to pursue a case in court. A very very similar case was tried before the very judge I'll have to go before, and he found against the plaintiff (which would be ME). However, the case was overturned on appeal in superior court. No clue what it must have cost the people, but huge. So here's yet another of my major criticisms of our system: how the heck is that judge not in prison? If he doesn't know how to correctly interpret law and find correctly, how is he even a judge, if not in prison? Our system is not agile at all. No self-correction that I'm seeing. There is a "judicial review" system but obviously it is non-functional. Probably a "good old boy" system. I do see and hear in many places including the news that judges can be a problem and need more oversight.
The drug wars in this country are far far out of hand. They've dovetailed into "civil forfeiture". If you're accused of a drug crime, you can lose everything you own, and even if you're proven completely innocent, tough crap, your life and belongings and $ are gonesky, as in sucks to be you. How corrupt is our system?
Good friend of mine's son got arrested 20 months ago. He's 20something, was on Ritalin, and needs to be. He's functional, but if you met him you'd pick up that something's not quite right. Not sure why he had extra Ritalin, but most people who need mental health medications don't always take them as they should. Anyway, he sold some to an undercover cop, and the cop did it 3 times to pile on the charges. Yes, they're allowed to do that. Pure entrapment, goading, something. Anyway, it happened in a county that's known for very tough prosecution and they went pretty hard on him. He was able to keep his job delivering pizzas, but every weekend for 7 months he had to spend in prison. If he was 1 minute late, they'd have thrown him in prison for a full 2 year sentence. He not only has to pay for his imprisonment- as in, pay $ to the prison system, he's been on an ankle monitor the whole time and he has to pay something like $430 / month for that!
Did I mention, he was prescribed Ritalin by a doctor? Should that have been an extenuating circumstance? Like, it's proven that he's not altogether making good decisions because provably his decision maker (brain) has problems. Absolutely no consideration of his mental health problem. They treated him like he was a street thug pusher. He's actually a very well behaved, polite, clean-cut, decent person. Believe it or not we have a few here in the US but we keep them hidden. :)
And all of this took a huge emotional toll on his mom especially, and dad of course because they helped him as much as possible, and his amazing wife has stuck with him too.
Oh, and it didn't really go to trial. There's a court hearing, but no real process- he took a "plea bargain" because the lawyer said he'd go to prison for years if he went to court. I might have taken my chances with a jury, if they're allowed to know that he has a mental illness. But knowing our legal system, that info might have been disallowed in the hearings. Rigged system, framed people.
This is one of many reasons the world is seeing so much unrest in the US. It's not just BLM- they're certainly right to protest, but the whole "legal system" is so rigged and corrupt in the US it all needs to be dismantled.
We The People have done a poor job of vigilance. There's a lot going on that we barely know about. News media is supposed to help uncover problems, but look at the crapstorm they've become.
I've heard interestingly good things about some European courts, like they're often doing away with oral argument, which makes me happy because should someone win because they have a great charismatic entertaining enthralling lawyer?
Full disclosure- my brother is a lawyer and just yesterday was telling me a story of how he got someone out of a criminal situation by playing to the jury. The person was found guilty in a followup case, different court and lawyers. The case is so bizarre it needs to be made into a movie. If you ever heard of Frank Abignola, "Catch me if you can" guy- this story is similarly bizarre and movie-worthy.