Facial recognition software mistook 1 in 5 California lawmakers for criminals, says ACLU

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: LA Times

California Assemblyman Phil Ting has never been arrested, but he was recently mistaken for a criminal.

He's not surprised.

Ting (D-San Francisco), who authored a bill to ban facial recognition software from being used on police body cameras, was one of 26 California legislators who was incorrectly matched with a mug shot in a recent test of a common face-scanning program by the American Civil Liberties Union.

About 1 in 5 legislators was erroneously matched to a person who had been arrested when the ACLU used the software to screen their pictures against a database of 25,000 publicly available booking photos. Last year, in a similar experiment done with photos of members of Congress, the software erroneously matched 28 federal legislators with mug shots.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/facial-recognition-software-mistook-1-in-5-california-lawmakers-for-criminals-says-aclu/ar-AAFKmZA?li=BBnbfcL

[R Merm]

1. If Nunes was one of the five,

then I would have to say it was accurate.

[flor-de-jasmim]

2. So they are face + character recognizers!

[Mike_DuBois]

3. But was it wrong?

Just sayin'...

[BootinUp]

4. So only 20% accurate then...drum hit!

[marble falls]

5. They were all Republicans, so it can accurately recognize a criminal, just not specific ones.

[bluedigger]

6. I'd have set the over/under at 2/5.

[keithbvadu2]

7. It identified the other 4 correctly as criminals?

[EarthFirst]

8. Such a fantastic headline...

What horrific implications; however...

[Toorich]

9. Judging by the surnames and apparent skin tones...

... it seems that over 50% of the mis-identifications of the politicians
by the system involved nonwhites. Hummmmmm.

[EX500rider]

10. I'd have to know what percent confidence threshold they had it set at.

Amazon said it could not immediately comment on the most recent ACLU test, but has previously disputed that the Rekognition software was unreliable, questioning the group's methods of scanning members of Congress. In its developer guide, Amazon recommends using a 99 percent confidence threshold when matching faces, and criticized the ACLU for using a lesser bar — the factory setting for the software, according to Matt Cagle, an attorney with the Northern California chapter of the ACLU — when testing it.
If it was set at 80% then it performed as it should.