Three arrests by police using facial recognition
Police in New Zealand have made three arrests using facial recognition technology, according to a Yahoo News New Zealand report. Few additional details are available, but the cases mark a notable use of the technology in law enforcement in the country.
Why this matters: Every time police use facial recognition to make an arrest, the same basic problem is in play. The technology makes mistakes, and those mistakes fall hardest on people who look least like the data it was trained on. An arrest is not a minor inconvenience. It can cost someone their job, their reputation, and their freedom before any error is ever corrected. Three arrests is a small number. It is also three chances for something to go seriously wrong, and the public deserves to know how the tool is being used and who is checking its work.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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