A big biometric security company in the UK, Facewatch, is in hot water after their facial recognition system caused a major snafu - the system wrongly identified a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter.
Facial recognition still struggles with really bad mistakes that are always bad optics for the business that uses it. I’m amazed anyone is still willing to use it in its current form.
It’s been the norm that these systems can’t tell the difference between people of dark pigmentation if it even acknowledges it’s seeing a person at all.
Running a system with a decade long history or racist looking mistakes is bonkers in the current climate.
The catch is that its only really a problem for the people getting flagged. Then you’re guilty until proven innocent, and the only person to blame is a soulless machine with a big button that reads “For customer support, go fuck yourself”.
As security theater, its cheap and easy to implement. As a passive income stream for tech bros, its a blank check. As a buzzword for politicians who can pretend they’re forward-thinking by rolling out some vaporware solution to a non-existent problem, its on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
I’m old enough to remember when sitting Senator Ted Kennedy got flagged by the Bush Admin’s No Fly List and people were convinced this is the sort of shit that would reform the intrusive, incompetent, ill-conceived TSA. 20 years later… nope, it didn’t. Enjoy techno-hell, Brits.
Despite concerns about accuracy and potential misuse, facial recognition technology seems poised for a surge in popularity. California-based restaurant CaliExpress by Flippy now allows customers to pay for their meals with a simple scan of their face, showcasing the potential of facial payment technology.
Oh boy, I can’t wait to be charged for someone else’s meal because they look just enough like me to trigger a payment.
I have an identical twin. This stuff is going to cause so many issues even if it worked perfectly.
If it works anything like Apple’s Face ID twins don’t actually map all that similar. In the general population the probability of matching mapping of the underlying facial structure is approximately 1:1,000,000. It is slightly higher for identical twins and then higher again for prepubescent identical twins.
And yet this woman was mistaken for a 19-year-old 🤔
Shitty implementation doesn’t mean shitty concept, you’d think a site full of tech nerds would understand such a basic concept.
As an American, I don’t know what opinion to have about this without knowing the woman’s race.
If she’s been flagged as shoplifter she’s probably black!
Why, because all shoplifters are black? I don’t understand. She’s being mistaken for another person, a real person on the system.
I used to know a smackhead that would steal things to order, I wonder if he’s still alive and whether he’s on this database. Never bought anything off him but I did buy him a drink occasionally. He’d had a bit of a difficult childhood.
Why, because all shoplifters are black?
All the ones that get caught. When you’re white, you can steal whatever you want.
Well, this blows the “if you’ve not done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” argument out of the water.
the way I like to respond to that:
“ok, pull down your pants and hand me your unlocked phone”
Gotta say, I don’t think Officer Chauvin is going to take well to your request.
This can’t be true. I was told that if she has nothing to hide she has nothing to worry about!
