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Comment by dv_dt | Hacker News Reader

There is an evil doppelgänger problem given how bad the recognition is - or how seemingly unrelated people can look like one another. Good luck arguing that the database is wrong.

And of course all of those problems are intensified for minorities or other out groups.

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If you have government ID stating you are someone other than the person they think they are looking for it’ll not take long for them to move on.

Throw in proximity/place of residence and false positives go down too

Place of residence is low usefulness in proving innocence as people can travel.

In wide enough use, there will be false positives including any proximity filter. The question is, is the system unbiased enough to protect innocents?

There is a reason that every suspected crime photo isn't broadcast wide 24-7, even with human recognition, the false alarms would cause a massive churn and misguided justice.

Someone holds up a shop, it’s caught on ccd. The criminal is not caught and the media is matched to your photo. Your id paperwork is not going to help. You have become the person they’re looking for.

Ask a postmaster

(Royal Mail, the privatised national mail carrier, had a bug in thier IT system which flagged a large number of franchise royal mail shop owners as stealing money. Even after RM became aware of the bug they continued to prosecute these franchise owners in civil and criminal court, and the courts believed RM as a big institution. Many owners were financially ruined with several suicides before they were vindicated)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

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