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Comment by _Nat_ | Hacker News Reader

Are these stories real?

I mean:

> Williams was wrongfully arrested in 2020 for federal larceny after he was misidentified by the Detroit Police Department’s facial recognition software after they used a grainy image from the surveillance footage. He was then picked from a photo lineup by the store security guard who wasn’t actually present for the incident. According to his testimony, Williams was detained for thirty hours and was not given any food or water.

So the software pointed out that some guy resembled a grainy photo. Okay.. that's like a random person calling in a tip that they saw someone who looks like a grainy photo on a Wanted-poster.

Then the guy gets arrested, there's a lineup for a security-guard who wasn't even there, they hold the guy for 30-hours without food or water, and that's due to the software?

The argument's too absurd for me to believe that it's being made in good-faith.

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I worked as technical support staff in law enforcement for many years before transitioning to knowledge work, and I assure you this very scenario (even without facial recognition oopsies) happens all the time, especially to people of color. It's one of the main reasons I got disgusted with the career and got out. People get arrested based on bad-faith tips, usually on a Friday so they can be held all weekend since detectives generally work banker's hours. If a suspect is in a holding cell they generally don't have access to a water fountain and must ask for water from jailers/guards who have already judged them as less than human and will "forget" to get them food and water. When Monday comes and the CID commander shows up, he will make the decision to cut the suspect loose because they never should have been detained in the first place, the detective(s) involved move on to the next suspect, and the cycle repeats.

It's disgusting and amoral and dehumanizing, and that's why I hated the job even though I had no direct involvement apart from running background checks and processing evidence.

That sounds really horrible. ..so they just snatch people up and abuse them on any slight pretext, depriving them of even water for days?

That seems bad enough like someone should've tried to fix it by now. I guess there'd be issues making it difficult to improve?

Those most critical of the system tend to be former employees, and some lose their jobs because they speak up. I wasn't that brave, I kept my mouth shut while I worked there but that in turn led to me hating the job, and myself, even more.

And I'm not saying that my experience or the man in the article's experience is "normal", but it certainly does seem widespread. There have been efforts to improve the situation in pre-trial jails; the PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) has had a measurable positive effect on it even though its focus is more on post-conviction incarceration, but I have observed jail staff laughing at and making fun of county jail PREA training (I worked as a training officer for a while at the end of my career, my effort in trying to make things better). There is simply a lack of empathy and compassion that is part of the job requirement; if you show a heart you are pushed out of the career by the heartless ones. By and large, especially at the ground level in booking/processing/housing, the workforce is mostly bullies and sadists with a few more-or-less "normal" people in the mix to try and keep it under control.

Accept that the behavior is basic human nature. No one can fix it.

You can say this about any social problem. It's a lazy way to avoid having to try and make it better.

Surely you can't be detained for more than 24hrs without charge?

Please note this is the process where I worked but it is different depending on where you are and which level of government you're dealing with (municipal, county, state, federal, etc.) Also I am not a legal expert, this is simply my experience while working in the system.

It varies by jurisdiction, but in most cases you can be arrested on a warrant and held for "first appearance" before a judge, where you are either formally charged by the court or the charges are dropped. If you are arrested on a Friday evening in a jurisdiction that doesn't do weekend court (usually smaller cities and counties), you will stew in jail until said first appearance on Monday. If the charges are dropped at first appearance (which is usually held by videoconference) you are released but the arrest remains on your record until you have it expunged. If you are formally charged at first appearance, you then either receive a bail/bond amount, are released on your own recognizance, or else bound over for indictment. Once indicted, you again may be able to make bail unless the charges/circumstances determine you are to be held without bail (i.e. you are considered a danger to yourself/others/your alleged victim, or you are a flight risk).

> Are these stories real?

> The argument's too absurd for me to believe that it's being made in good-faith.

It's the US, so I have no difficulty believing this kind of thing can happen. All it needs is an overzealous DA office and state prosecutor with a hard-on for deploying these technologies to keep their conviction rates up (or think they can).

See also Aaron Schwartz, who thought things would get so dystopian for that young man, just for downloading a bunch of science papers?

I can't believe it. This is too much.

All the facial-recognition software is supposed to do is point out similarities in pictures, and then humans can see if they agree. That's it. None of the silliness after that is due to the software, anymore than it's due to the security-camera that captured the grainy-footage in the first place.

Of course the silliness is all in our heads, but having an excuse "Friend Computer says so!" enables 10x more silliness.

I don't think so. His point is that there are, surely, many more cases exactly like this (shoddy tips leading to wrongful detainment and subsequent poor treatment) where facial recognition software is completely absent from the picture.

This man was not "Wrongfully Arrested by Facial Recognition". He was wrongfully arrested (and criminally treated) by incompetent, capricious people and the bureaucracy that shields them. Bonus for the media outlets that could not care less about humanitarian rights violations or human dignity, but do have an axe to grind with Big Tech.

An accurate headline would be: Man Wrongfully Arrested by Corrupt State Government Tells Corrupt Federal Government His Story

Yes, the stories are real.

They're not exclusive to the US, of course. But in the US, such detentions, or asphixiations, or shootings, or deprivations of property ("civil forfeiture") by law enforcement and/or under colour of law, are why the streets have been in rightful protest and upheaval for much of the past decade.

Those protests are a continuation of those of a half century ago and more, many based on the broken promises of the civil rights reforms of the 1960s.

And whilst the victims of such actions are overwhelmingly traditional minority populations, the abuses are not exclusive to them. Anyone poor or othered is particularly vulnerable. Even city councilmembers, state representatives, congressional representatives, and senators have been beaten, detained, or denied boarding privileges on flights due to Kafkaesque procedures and brutish enforcement.

I agree. How is the 30h of no water and no food not the main point of this article. People will always get wrongfully detained for a while, (no matter what or no technology used), isn't the real important thing to treat detainees well?

Agreed. The sexy AI twist is just the squirrl bringing attention to normal human authoritative behavior that has been going on for many thousands of years. In my mind the involvement of AI or facial recognition is immaterial.

The police believe that the software match proves he is guilty from the jump. The rest is gathering "evidence" to prove it further. Without the software, he wouldn't have been arrested. Guilty until proven innocent. The police are lazy, why investigate when the software means you don't have to?

There are clearly at least three problems there.

- Dependence on snake-oil software

- Dependence on a known-unreliable but very entrenched technique (lineups)

- Inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Of these, the snake-oil software is probably easiest to go after, as it's newer. I assume he's made complaints about the other stuff, too.

I mean, I'd be shocked if it had happened here, but the latter two points, unfortunately, don't sound too out-there by the standards of US law enforcement.

Remember: we're talking about metropolitan police, a force in our society that discriminates against high IQ applicants.

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