Embedded Racism & Facial Recognition

[Webster]

Democracy Now: Pregnant Woman’s False Arrest in Detroit Shows “Racism Gets Embedded” in Facial Recognition Technology

A shocking story of wrongful arrest in Detroit has renewed scrutiny of how facial recognition software is being deployed by police departments, despite major flaws in the technology. Porcha Woodruff was arrested in February when police showed up at her house accusing her of robbery and carjacking. Woodruff, who was eight months pregnant at the time, insisted she had nothing to do with the crime, but police detained her for 11 hours, during which time she had contractions. She was eventually released on a $100,000 bond before prosecutors dropped the case a month later, admitting that her arrest was based in part on a false facial recognition match. Woodruff is the sixth known person to be falsely accused of a crime because of facial recognition, and all six victims have been Black. “That’s not an accident,” says Dorothy Roberts, director of the University of Pennsylvania Program on Race, Science and Society, who says new technology often reflects societal biases when built atop flawed systems. “Racism gets embedded into the technologies.”

 

[Black Angel]

This doesn't surprise me in the least and it is EXACTLY why I keep telling my Mom to stop using these ai tools and filters..

I told her that the problems with these tools, whether they are used for law enforcement or for makeup filters, is that both conscious and subconscious biases can be and are often hardcoded into the software. So if you have a developer that thinks Black women look like men or are masculine, then what do you think is going to happen when you use a filter or tool coded by that person. Every result you get as a Black woman, will likely show a man.

This is what I told my Mom and this is why I suggested that if she really wants to play with these filters, that she should opt for one coded by a BIPOC person, as they are much less likely to have bias issue. And I am glad that she actually listened because she was getting very frustrated that every result showed a man, when in reality, her very soft facial features would make it impossible to pull off without a shit ton of makeup and maybe some prosthetics.

At any rate, if this happens with silly makeup filters, then it stands to reason that it would also exist in law enforcement. Especially since the profession in itself is inherently biased against Black people because they literally used to be Slave Patrol in this country.

And really, if SCOTUS has ruled at least 3x since 1985 that the police have no obligation to protect the people, (see rulings: Castle Rock v. Gonzalez, DeShaney v. Winnebago County and Warren v. DC) and we have seen this with Uvalde, in which not only did the cops do NOTHING, but they STOPPED a fellow cop who wanted to rescue his wife who was a teacher, and was among those killed and have been bullying the grieving parents into silence and have been harrassing the brave mother who was handcuffed, got out and rescued her kids, and have been threatening her and her family for speaking out against them and other incidents in which police turned a blind eye or straight up killed those who needed help, and despite all of this, crime has been down for the past 20 years, and is still trending downward, then you really gotta ask yourself, who are all of these surveillance and militarized equipment really intended for, if not the people?

This essentially means that if the police have no legal obligation to protect you, then that means these tools are to be used against you. And from what we have seen, it will be on behalf of the wealthy. So our tax dollars are literally funding our own eventual demise. But as long as the racist supporters think that these tools will be used against someone who looks like me, then they will happily continue supporting it until something horrible happens to someone they know personally..