Home Office kept police facial recognition flaws to itself, UK data watchdog fumes The UK's data protection watchdog has criticized the Home Office for failing to disclose significant biases in police facial recognition technology, despite regular engagement between the organizations. Emily Keaney, deputy commissioner for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), said the regulator only learned last week …
"Our priority is protecting the public."
One of the things the public should be protected from is misuse of policing. We have seen several well-publicised miscarriages of justice recently, especially if "policing" includes private powers of prosecution as wielded by the Post Office.
It raises the question of whether concealment of a flaw from the regulator constitutes misfeasance in public office.
Okay, say they don't use the unreliable matches in evidence. That doesn't stop them guiding investigations or even using them to lean on suspects to get an admission of guilt. A fair few people will confess when leaned on hard enough even if they're not guilty of whatever they're accused of. It might all be used appropriately but history suggests otherwise, especially since it seems there's been a cover-up.
I could see someone being arrested for the "probable cause" that the software said they were a match. The arrest itself does harm (reputational damage, lost work time, etc.), even if the facial recognition is never used as official evidence against them.
Seconded to the Home Office some 11 years ago for 10 months. While we provided some technology for one of the agencies, I was also asked to look at funded research, projections for success and hurdles. One of those was 'predictive crime prevention'. Our report was supressed - certainly by the management and maybe the minister (May was in charge). They just did not like hard evidence and proijections for misuse.
Quote: "...The tests examined two algorithms....."
Once again the STASI fail to say what CCTV was tested AGAINST!!!!!
So..........CCTV against Home Office passport pictures?
So..........CCTV against DVLC driving licence pictures?
So..........CCTV against META (Facebook? WhatsApp?) pictures?
Nope......no one is saying how the tests were conducted............
Nope......no one is talking about GDPR.......................................
Why am I not surprised?
Probably not. There's a few of the commentariat who are civil or public servants (self included), but numerically the public sector is hugely under-represented. I'd reckon the likely explanation is that the Reg appeals to people who are or were at the sharp end of IT but there's few public sector employees who are techies, on account of most IT being contracted.
Black people are likely to suffer more false positives because of lack of contrast in their photo.
A white person could be identified as dark haired, blonde, ginger, etc.
On a distant photo they may have distinctive facial features visible by shadows on their face.
This doesn't work so well with people with dark skin and universally black hair.
They should also be looking at "gait" - how they move and walk.
For example, I have a slightly twisted leg since a developmental problem with my right leg as a teenager.
So I always walk with a slight limp I can't hide.
So some who looks like me, not limping, means it's not me.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there a method of applying makeup which totally confuses any sort of face recognition? A bit like the old ‘dazzle patterns’ applied to warships in WW2.
If also, does anyone know how best to invest in this business as I suspect it will be quite lucrative in the (near) future!
Years ago, a friend went for a new photo card. It was in the early days of these new-fangled digital camera, he was of Jamaican heritage and wearing a navy blue 'security guard' style jumper.
We got to see the resulting photo card before it was sent back by the boss, rejected. The picture was just a black blob with a couple of white dots for eyes!... imagine a snowman head in negative
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