Law Enforcement – AI News https://news.deepgeniusai.com Artificial Intelligence News Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:12:10 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://deepgeniusai.com/news.deepgeniusai.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2020/09/ai-icon-60x60.png Law Enforcement – AI News https://news.deepgeniusai.com 32 32 Police use of Clearview AI’s facial recognition increased 26% after Capitol raid https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2021/01/11/police-use-clearview-ai-facial-recognition-increased-26-capitol-raid/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2021/01/11/police-use-clearview-ai-facial-recognition-increased-26-capitol-raid/#respond Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:12:08 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=10153 Clearview AI reports that police use of the company’s highly-controversial facial recognition system jumped 26 percent following the raid on the Capitol. The facial recognition system relies on scraping the data of people from across the web without their explicit consent, a practice which has naturally raised some eyebrows—including the ACLU’s which called it a... Read more »

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Clearview AI reports that police use of the company’s highly-controversial facial recognition system jumped 26 percent following the raid on the Capitol.

The facial recognition system relies on scraping the data of people from across the web without their explicit consent, a practice which has naturally raised some eyebrows—including the ACLU’s which called it a “nightmare scenario” for privacy.

Around three billion images are said to have been scraped for Clearview AI’s system.

“Common law has never recognised a right to privacy for your face,” Clearview AI lawyer Tor Ekeland once argued.

Whether you call them protestors or domestic terrorists, the Trump supporters who raided the US Capitol Building last week – incited by the president to halt democracy and overturn the votes of millions of Americans – committed clear criminal offences that were bipartisanly condemned.

In comments to New York Times, Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That claimed the company’s witnesses “a 26 percent increase of searches over our usual weekday search volume” on January 7th, following the riots.

Given the number of individuals involved, law enforcement has a gargantuan task to identify and locate the people that went far beyond exercising their right to peaceful protest and invaded a federal building, caused huge amounts of damage, and threatened elected representatives and staff.

The FBI has issued public appeals, but it’s little surprise that law enforcement is turning to automated means—regardless of the controversy. According to Clearview AI, approximately 2,400 agencies across the US use the company’s facial recognition technology.

Last year, the UK and Australia launched a joint probe into Clearview AI’s practices.

“The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have opened a joint investigation into the personal information handling practices of Clearview Inc., focusing on the company’s use of ‘scraped’ data and biometrics of individuals,” the ICO wrote in a statement.

A similar probe was also launched by the EU’s privacy watchdog. The European Data Protection Board ruled that any use of the service by law enforcement in Europe would “likely not be consistent with the EU data protection regime” and that it “has doubts as to whether any Union or Member State law provides a legal basis for using a service such as the one offered by Clearview AI.”

Clearview AI has already been forced to suspend operations in Canada after the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada opened an investigation into the company.

While Clearview AI’s facial recognition tech continues to have widespread use in the US, some police departments have taken the independent decision to ban officers from using such systems due to the well-documented inaccuracies which particularly affect minority communities.

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CDEI launches a ‘roadmap’ for tackling algorithmic bias https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/11/27/cdei-launches-roadmap-tackling-algorithmic-bias/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/11/27/cdei-launches-roadmap-tackling-algorithmic-bias/#respond Fri, 27 Nov 2020 16:10:35 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=10058 A review from the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) has led to the creation of a “roadmap” for tackling algorithmic bias. The analysis was commissioned by the UK government in October 2018 and will receive a formal response. Algorithms bring substantial benefits to businesses and individuals able to use them effectively. However, increasing... Read more »

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A review from the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) has led to the creation of a “roadmap” for tackling algorithmic bias.

The analysis was commissioned by the UK government in October 2018 and will receive a formal response.

Algorithms bring substantial benefits to businesses and individuals able to use them effectively. However, increasing evidence suggests biases are – often unconsciously – making their way into algorithms and creating an uneven playing field.

The CDEI is the UK government’s advisory body on the responsible use of AI and data-driven technology. CDEI has spent the past two years examining the issue of algorithmic bias and how it can be tackled.

Adrian Weller, Board Member for the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, said:

“It is vital that we work hard now to get this right as adoption of algorithmic decision-making increases. Government, regulators, and industry need to work together with interdisciplinary experts, stakeholders, and the public to ensure that algorithms are used to promote fairness, not undermine it.

The Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation has today set out a range of measures to help the UK to achieve this, with a focus on enhancing transparency and accountability in decision-making processes that have a significant impact on individuals.

Not only does the report propose a roadmap to tackle the risks, but it highlights the opportunity that good use of data presents to address historical unfairness and avoid new biases in key areas of life.”

The report focuses on four key sectors where algorithmic bias poses the biggest risk: policing, recruitment, financial services, and local government.

Today’s facial recognition algorithms are relatively effective when used on white males, but research has consistently shown how ineffective they are with darker skin colours and females. The error rate is, therefore, higher when facial recognition algorithms are used on some parts of society over others.

In June, Detroit Police chief Editor Craig said facial recognition would misidentify someone around 96 percent of the time—not particularly comforting when they’re being used to perform mass surveillance of protests.

Craig’s comments were made just days after the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) lodged a complaint against Detroit Police following the harrowing wrongful arrest of black male Robert Williams due to a facial recognition error.

And that’s just one example of where AI can unfairly impact some parts of society over another.

“Fairness is a highly prized human value,” the report’s preface reads. “Societies in which individuals can flourish need to be held together by practices and institutions that are regarded as fair.”

Ensuring fairness in algorithmic decision-making

Transparency is required for algorithms. In financial services, a business loan or mortgage could be rejected without transparency simply because a person was born in a poor neighbourhood. Job applications could be rejected not on a person’s actual skill but dependent on where they were educated.

Such biases exist in humans and our institutions today, but automating them at scale is a recipe for disaster. Removing bias from algorithms is not an easy task but if achieved would lead to increased fairness by taking human biases out of the equation.

“It is well established that there is a risk that algorithmic systems can lead to biased decisions, with perhaps the largest underlying cause being the encoding of existing human biases into algorithmic systems. But the evidence is far less clear on whether algorithmic decision-making tools carry more or less risk of bias than previous human decision-making processes. Indeed, there are reasons to think that better use of data can have a role in making decisions fairer, if done with appropriate care.

When changing processes that make life-affecting decisions about individuals we should always proceed with caution. It is important to recognise that algorithms cannot do everything. There are some aspects of decision-making where human judgement, including the ability to be sensitive and flexible to the unique circumstances of an individual, will remain crucial.”

The report’s authors examined the aforementioned four key sectors to determine their current “maturity levels” in algorithmic decision-making.

In recruitment, the authors found rapid growth in the use of algorithms to make decisions at all stages. They note that adequate data is being collected to monitor outcomes but found that understanding of how to avoid human biases creeping in is lacking.

“More guidance is needed on how to ensure that these tools do not unintentionally discriminate against groups of people, particularly when trained on historic or current employment data.”

The financial services industry has relied on data to make decisions for longer than arguably any other to determine things like how likely it is an individual can repay a debt.

“Specific groups are historically underrepresented in the financial system, and there is a risk that these historic biases could be entrenched further through algorithmic systems.”

CDEI found limited use of algorithmic decision-making in UK policing but found variance across forces with regards to both usage and managing ethical risks.

“The use of data analytics tools in policing carries significant risk. Without sufficient care, processes can lead to Review into bias in algorithmic decision-making: Executive summary Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation 8 outcomes that are biased against particular groups, or systematically unfair.

In many scenarios where these tools are helpful, there is still an important balance to be struck between automated decision-making and the application of professional judgement and discretion.”

Finally, in local government, CDEI noted an increased use of algorithms to inform decision-making but most are in their early stages of deployment. Such tools can be powerful assets for societal good – like helping to plan where resources should be allocated to maintain vital services – but can also carry significant risks.

“Evidence has shown that certain people are more likely to be overrepresented in data held by local authorities and this can then lead to biases in predictions and interventions.”

The CDEI makes a number of recommendations in its report but among them is:

  • Clear and mandatory transparency over how algorithms are used for public decision-making and steps taken to ensure the fair treatment of individuals.
  • Full accountability for organisations implementing such technologies.
  • Improving the diversity of roles involved with developing and deploying decision-making tools.
  • Updating model contracts and framework agreements for public sector procurement to incorporate minimum standards around the ethical use of AI.
  • The government working with regulators to provide clear guidance on the collection and use of protected characteristic data in outcome monitoring and decision-making processes. They should then encourage the use of that guidance and data to address current and historic bias in key sectors.
  • Ensuring that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has sufficient resources to investigate cases of alleged algorithmic discrimination.

CDEI is overseen by an independent board which is made up of experts from across industry, civil society, academia, and government; it is an advisory body and does not directly set policies. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport is consulting on whether a statutory status would help the CDEI to deliver its remit as part of the National Data Strategy.

You can find a full copy of the CDEI’s report into tackling algorithmic bias here (PDF)

(Photo by Matt Duncan on Unsplash)

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AI tool detects child abuse images with 99% accuracy https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/07/31/ai-tool-detect-child-abuse-images-accuracy/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/07/31/ai-tool-detect-child-abuse-images-accuracy/#respond Fri, 31 Jul 2020 16:08:31 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=9789 A new AI-powered tool claims to detect child abuse images with around 99 percent accuracy. The tool, called Safer, is developed by non-profit Thorn to assist businesses which do not have in-house filtering systems to detect and remove such images. According to the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK, reports of child abuse images surged... Read more »

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A new AI-powered tool claims to detect child abuse images with around 99 percent accuracy.

The tool, called Safer, is developed by non-profit Thorn to assist businesses which do not have in-house filtering systems to detect and remove such images.

According to the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK, reports of child abuse images surged 50 percent during the COVID-19 lockdown. In the 11 weeks starting on 23rd March, its hotline logged 44,809 reports of images compared with 29,698 last year. Many of these images are from children who’ve spent more time online and been coerced into releasing images of themselves.

Andy Burrows, head of child safety online at the NSPCC, recently told the BBC: “Harm could have been lessened if social networks had done a better job of investing in technology, investing in safer design features heading into this crisis.”

Safer is one tool which could help with quickly flagging child abuse content to limit the harm caused.

The detection services of Safer include:

  • Image Hash Matching: The flagship service that generates cryptographic and perceptual hashes for images and compares those hashes to known CSAM hashes. At the time of publishing, the database includes 5.9M hashes. Hashing happens in the client’s infrastructure to maintain user privacy.
  • CSAM Image Classifier: Machine learning classification model developed by Thorn and leveraged within Safer that returns a prediction for whether a file is CSAM. The classifier has been trained on datasets totaling hundreds of thousands images including adult pornography, CSAM, and various benign imagery and can aid in the identification of potentially new and unknown CSAM.
  • Video Hash Matching: Service that generates cryptographic and perceptual hashes for video scenes and compares them to hashes representing scenes of suspected CSAM. At the time of publishing, the database includes over 650k hashes of suspected CSAM scenes.
  • SaferList for Detection: Service for Safer customers to leverage the knowledge of the broader Safer community by matching against hash sets contributed by other Safer customers to broaden detection efforts. Customers can customise what hash sets they would like to include.

However, the problem doesn’t stop with flagging content. It’s been documented that moderators for social media platforms often require therapy or even commit suicide after being exposed day-in, day-out to some of the most disturbing content posted online.

Thorn claims Safer is built with the wellness of moderators in mind. To this end, content is automatically blurred (the company says this currently only works for images.)

Safer has APIs available for developers that “are built to broaden the shared knowledge of child abuse content by contributing hashes, scanning against other industry hashes, and sending feedback on false positives.”

One of Thorn’s most high-profile clients so far is Flickr. Using Safer, Flickr found an image of child abuse hosted on its platform which – following a law enforcement investigation – led to the recovery of 21 children ranging from 18 months to 14 years old, and the arrest of the perpetrator.

Safer is currently available for any company operating in the US. Thorn plans to expand to other countries next year after customising for each country’s national reporting requirements.

You can find out more about the tool and how to get started here.

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Researchers create AI bot to protect the identities of BLM protesters https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/07/29/researchers-create-ai-bot-protect-identities-blm-protesters/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/07/29/researchers-create-ai-bot-protect-identities-blm-protesters/#respond Wed, 29 Jul 2020 16:09:37 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=9776 Researchers from Stanford have created an AI-powered bot to automatically cover up the faces of Black Lives Matter protesters in photos. Everyone should have the right to protest. And, if done legally, to do so without fear of having things like their future job prospects ruined because they’ve been snapped at a demonstration – from... Read more »

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Researchers from Stanford have created an AI-powered bot to automatically cover up the faces of Black Lives Matter protesters in photos.

Everyone should have the right to protest. And, if done legally, to do so without fear of having things like their future job prospects ruined because they’ve been snapped at a demonstration – from which a select few may have gone on to do criminal acts such as arson and looting.

With images from the protests being widely shared on social media to raise awareness, police have been using the opportunity to add the people featured within them to facial recognition databases.

“Over the past weeks, we have seen an increasing number of arrests at BLM protests, with images circulating around the web enabling automatic identification of those individuals and subsequent arrests to hamper protest activity,” the researchers explain.

Software has been available for some time to blur faces, but recent AI advancements have proved that it’s possible to deblur such images.

Researchers from Stanford Machine Learning set out to develop an automated tool which prevents the real identity of those in an image from being revealed.

The result of their work is BLMPrivacyBot:

Rather than blur the faces, the bot automatically covers them up with the black fist emoji which has become synonymous with the Black Lives Matter movement. The researchers hope such a solution will be built-in to social media platforms, but admit it’s unlikely.

The researchers trained the model for their AI bot on a dataset consisting of around 1.2 million people called QNRF. However, they warn it’s not foolproof as an individual could be identified through other means such as what clothing they’re wearing.

To use the BLMPrivacyBot, you can either send an image to its Twitter handle or upload a photo to the web interface here. The open source repo is available if you want to look at the inner workings.

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UK and Australia launch joint probe into Clearview AI’s mass data scraping https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/07/10/uk-australia-probe-clearview-ai-mass-data-scraping/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/07/10/uk-australia-probe-clearview-ai-mass-data-scraping/#respond Fri, 10 Jul 2020 14:49:51 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=9745 The UK and Australia have launched a joint probe into the controversial “data scraping” practices of Clearview AI. Clearview AI has repeatedly made headlines, and rarely for good reason. The company’s facial recognition technology is impressive but relies on scraping billions of people’s data from across the web. “Common law has never recognised a right... Read more »

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The UK and Australia have launched a joint probe into the controversial “data scraping” practices of Clearview AI.

Clearview AI has repeatedly made headlines, and rarely for good reason. The company’s facial recognition technology is impressive but relies on scraping billions of people’s data from across the web.

“Common law has never recognised a right to privacy for your face,” Clearview AI lawyer Tor Ekeland argued recently.

Regulators in the UK and Australia seem to have a different perspective than Ekeland and have announced a joint probe into Clearview AI’s practices.

“The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have opened a joint investigation into the personal information handling practices of Clearview Inc., focusing on the company’s use of ‘scraped’ data and biometrics of individuals,” the ICO wrote in a statement.

“The investigation highlights the importance of enforcement cooperation in protecting the personal information of Australian and UK citizens in a globalized data environment.”

A similar probe was launched by the EU’s privacy watchdog last month.

The European Data Protection Board ruled that any use of the service by law enforcement in Europe would “likely not be consistent with the EU data protection regime” and that it “has doubts as to whether any Union or Member State law provides a legal basis for using a service such as the one offered by Clearview AI.”

Clearview AI’s facial recognition system is used by over 2,200 law enforcement agencies around the world. A recent leak suggests it’s even being used by commercial businesses like Best Buy and Macy’s. In May, Clearview said it would stop working with non–law enforcement entities.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) launched a lawsuit against Clearview AI in May after calling it a “nightmare scenario” for privacy.

Aside from the company’s practices, concerns have been raised about Clearview AI’s extensive ties with the far-right. Ekeland himself has gained notoriety as “The Troll’s Lawyer” for defending clients such as neo-Nazi troll Andrew Auernheimer.

“Companies like Clearview will end privacy as we know it, and must be stopped,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

(Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash)

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Detroit Police chief says AI face recognition doesn’t work ‘96% of the time’ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/06/30/detroit-police-chief-ai-face-recognition/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/06/30/detroit-police-chief-ai-face-recognition/#respond Tue, 30 Jun 2020 09:45:29 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=9720 Detroit Police chief Editor Craig has acknowledged that AI-powered face recognition doesn’t work the vast majority of times. “If we would use the software only [for subject identification], we would not solve the case 95-97 percent of the time,” Craig said. “If we were just to use the technology by itself to identify someone, I... Read more »

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Detroit Police chief Editor Craig has acknowledged that AI-powered face recognition doesn’t work the vast majority of times.

“If we would use the software only [for subject identification], we would not solve the case 95-97 percent of the time,” Craig said. “If we were just to use the technology by itself to identify someone, I would say 96 percent of the time it would misidentify.”

Craig’s comments arrive just days after the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) lodged a complaint against the Detroit police following the harrowing wrongful arrest of black male Robert Williams due to a facial recognition error.

Detroit Police arrested Williams for allegedly stealing five watches valued at $3800 from a store in October 2018. A blurry CCTV image was matched by a facial recognition algorithm to Williams’ driver’s license photo.

Current AI algorithms are known to have a racism issue. Extensive studies have repeatedly shown that facial recognition algorithms are almost 100 percent accurate when used on white males, but have serious problems when it comes to darker skin colours and the fairer sex.

This racism issue was shown again this week after an AI designed to upscale blurry photos, such as those often taken from security cameras, was applied to a variety of people from the BAME communities.

Here’s a particularly famous one:

And some other examples:

Last week, Boston followed in the footsteps of an increasing number of cities like San Francisco, Oakland, and California in banning facial recognition technology over human rights concerns.

“Facial recognition is inherently dangerous and inherently oppressive. It cannot be reformed or regulated. It must be abolished,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future.

Over the other side of the pond, facial recognition tests in the UK so far have also been nothing short of a complete failure. An initial trial at the 2016 Notting Hill Carnival led to not a single person being identified. A follow-up trial the following year led to no legitimate matches but 35 false positives.

An independent report into the Met Police’s facial recognition trials, conducted last year by Professor Peter Fussey and Dr Daragh Murray, concluded that it was only verifiably accurate in just 19 percent of cases.

The next chilling step for AI in surveillance is using it to predict crime. Following news of an imminent publication called ‘A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Processing,’ over 1000 experts signed an open letter last week opposing the use of AI for such purposes.

“Machine learning programs are not neutral; research agendas and the data sets they work with often inherit dominant cultural beliefs about the world,” warned the letter’s authors.

The acknowledgement from Detroit’s police chief that current facial recognition technologies do not work in around 96 percent of cases should be reason enough to halt its use, especially for law enforcement, at least until serious improvements are made.

(Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash)

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The ACLU uncovers the first known wrongful arrest due to AI error https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/06/25/aclu-uncovers-wrongful-arrest-ai-error/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/06/25/aclu-uncovers-wrongful-arrest-ai-error/#respond Thu, 25 Jun 2020 12:05:26 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=9711 The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has forced the police to acknowledge a wrongful arrest due to an erroneous algorithm. While it’s been suspected that documented racial bias with facial recognition algorithms has led to false arrests, it’s been difficult to prove. On Wednesday, the ACLU lodged a complaint against the Detroit police after black... Read more »

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The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has forced the police to acknowledge a wrongful arrest due to an erroneous algorithm.

While it’s been suspected that documented racial bias with facial recognition algorithms has led to false arrests, it’s been difficult to prove.

On Wednesday, the ACLU lodged a complaint against the Detroit police after black male Robert Williams was arrested on his front lawn “as his wife Melissa looked on and as his daughters wept from the trauma”. Williams was held in a “crowded and filthy” cell overnight without being given any reason.

Detroit Police arrested Williams for allegedly stealing five watches valued at $3800 from a store in October 2018. A blurry CCTV image was matched by a facial recognition algorithm to Williams’ driver’s license photo.

During an interrogation the day after his arrest, the police admitted that “the computer must have gotten it wrong”. Williams was kept incarcerated until after dark “at which point he was released out the front door, on a cold and rainy January night, where he was forced to wait outside on the curb for approximately an hour while his wife scrambled to find child care for the children so that she could come pick him up.”

Speaking to the NY Times, a Detroit police spokesperson said the department “does not make arrests based solely on facial recognition,” and claims witness interviews and a photo lineup were used.

However, a response from the Wayne County prosecutor’s office confirms the department used facial recognition to identify Williams using the security footage and an eyewitness to the crime was not shown the alleged photo lineup.

In its complaint, the ACLU demands that Detroit police end the use of facial recognition “as the facts of Mr. Williams’ case prove both that the technology is flawed and that DPD investigators are not competent in making use of such technology.”

This week, Boston became the latest city to ban facial recognition technology for municipal use. Boston follows an increasing number of cities like San Francisco, Oakland, and California who’ve banned the technology over human rights concerns.

“Facial recognition is inherently dangerous and inherently oppressive. It cannot be reformed or regulated. It must be abolished,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future.

“Boston just became the latest major city to stop the use of this extraordinary and toxic surveillance technology. Every other city should follow suit.”

Cases like Mr Williams’ are certainly strengthening such calls. Over 1,000 experts signed an open letter this week against the use of AI for the next chilling step, crime prediction.

(Photo by ev on Unsplash)

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Over 1,000 researchers sign letter opposing ‘crime predicting’ AI https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/06/24/over-1000-researchers-sign-letter-crime-predicting-ai/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/06/24/over-1000-researchers-sign-letter-crime-predicting-ai/#respond Wed, 24 Jun 2020 12:24:25 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=9706 More than 1,000 researchers, academics, and experts have signed an open letter opposing the use of AI to predict crime. Anyone who has watched the sci-fi classic Minority Report will be concerned about attempts to predict crime before it happens. In an ideal scenario, crime prediction could help determine where to allocate police resources –... Read more »

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More than 1,000 researchers, academics, and experts have signed an open letter opposing the use of AI to predict crime.

Anyone who has watched the sci-fi classic Minority Report will be concerned about attempts to predict crime before it happens. In an ideal scenario, crime prediction could help determine where to allocate police resources – but the reality will be very different.

The researchers are speaking out ahead of an imminent publication titled ‘A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Processing’. In the paper, the authors claim to be able to predict whether a person will become a criminal based on automated facial recognition.

“By automating the identification of potential threats without bias, our aim is to produce tools for crime prevention, law enforcement, and military applications that are less impacted by implicit biases and emotional responses,” says Harrisburg University Professor and co-author of the paper Nathaniel J.S. Ashby.

“Our next step is finding strategic partners to advance this mission.”

Finding willing partners may prove to be a challenge. Signatories of the open letter include employees working on AI from tech giants including Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.

In their letter, the signatories highlight the many issues of today’s AI technologies which make dabbling in crime prediction so dangerous.

Chief among the concerns is the well-documented racial bias of algorithms. Every current facial recognition system is more accurate when detecting white males and often incorrectly flags members of the BAME community as criminals more often when used in a law enforcement setting.

However, even if the inaccuracies with facial recognition algorithms are addressed, the researchers highlight the problems with the current justice system which have been put in the spotlight in recent weeks following the murder of George Floyd.

In their letter, the researchers explain:

“Research of this nature — and its accompanying claims to accuracy — rest on the assumption that data regarding criminal arrest and conviction can serve as reliable, neutral indicators of underlying criminal activity. Yet these records are far from neutral.

As numerous scholars have demonstrated, historical court and arrest data reflect the policies and practices of the criminal justice system. These data reflect who police choose to arrest, how judges choose to rule, and which people are granted longer or more lenient sentences.

Countless studies have shown that people of color are treated more harshly than similarly situated white people at every stage of the legal system, which results in serious distortions in the data. Thus, any software built within the existing criminal legal framework will inevitably echo those same prejudices and fundamental inaccuracies when it comes to determining if a person has the ‘face of a criminal.’”

Among the co-authors of the disputed paper is Jonathan W. Korn, a Ph.D. student who is highlighted as an NYPD veteran. Korn says that AI which can predict criminality would be “a significant advantage for law enforcement agencies.”

While such a system would make the lives of law enforcement officers easier, it would do so at the cost of privacy and the automation of racial profiling.

“Machine learning programs are not neutral; research agendas and the data sets they work with often inherit dominant cultural beliefs about the world,” warn the letter’s authors.

“The uncritical acceptance of default assumptions inevitably leads to discriminatory design in algorithmic systems, reproducing ideas which normalise social hierarchies and legitimise violence against marginalised groups.”

You can find the full open letter here.

(Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash)

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The EU’s privacy watchdog takes aim at Clearview AI’s facial recognition https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/06/11/eu-privacy-watchdog-aim-clearview-ai-facial-recognition/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/06/11/eu-privacy-watchdog-aim-clearview-ai-facial-recognition/#respond Thu, 11 Jun 2020 14:33:29 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=9688 The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) believes use of Clearview AI’s controversial facial recognition system would be illegal. Clearview AI’s facial recognition system is used by over 2,200 law enforcement agencies around the world and even commercial businesses like Best Buy and Macy’s, according to a recent leak. The EDPB has now ruled that any... Read more »

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The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) believes use of Clearview AI’s controversial facial recognition system would be illegal.

Clearview AI’s facial recognition system is used by over 2,200 law enforcement agencies around the world and even commercial businesses like Best Buy and Macy’s, according to a recent leak.

The EDPB has now ruled that any use of the service by law enforcement in Europe would “likely not be consistent with the EU data protection regime.”

Furthermore, the watchdog “has doubts as to whether any Union or Member State law provides a legal basis for using a service such as the one offered by Clearview AI.”

Clearview AI scrapes billions of photos from across the internet for its powerful system, a practice which has come under fire by privacy campaigners. “Common law has never recognised a right to privacy for your face,” Clearview AI lawyer Tor Ekeland argued recently.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) launched a lawsuit against Clearview AI last month after calling it a “nightmare scenario” for privacy.

“Companies like Clearview will end privacy as we know it, and must be stopped,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

Aside from the company’s practices, concerns have been raised about Clearview AI’s extensive ties with the far-right. Ekeland himself has gained notoriety as “The Troll’s Lawyer” for defending clients such as neo-Nazi troll Andrew Auernheimer.

Backlash over Clearview AI forced the company to announce it will no longer offer its services to private companies. The EU’s ruling will limit Clearview AI’s potential customers even further.

Concerns have grown in recent weeks about facial recognition services amid protests over racial discrimination. Facial recognition services have been repeatedly found to falsely flag minorities; stoking fears they’ll lead to automated racial profiling.

IBM and Amazon have both announced this week they’ll no longer provide facial recognition services to law enforcement and have called on Congress to increase regulation to help ensure future deployments meet ethical standards.

(Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash)

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ACLU sues Clearview AI calling it a ‘nightmare scenario’ for privacy https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/05/29/aclu-clearview-ai-nightmare-scenario-privacy/ https://news.deepgeniusai.com/2020/05/29/aclu-clearview-ai-nightmare-scenario-privacy/#comments Fri, 29 May 2020 13:48:55 +0000 https://news.deepgeniusai.com/?p=9660 The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing controversial facial recognition provider Clearview AI over privacy concerns. “Companies like Clearview will end privacy as we know it, and must be stopped,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “The ACLU is taking its fight to defend privacy... Read more »

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing controversial facial recognition provider Clearview AI over privacy concerns.

“Companies like Clearview will end privacy as we know it, and must be stopped,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

“The ACLU is taking its fight to defend privacy rights against the growing threat of this unregulated surveillance technology to the courts, even as we double down on our work in legislatures and city councils nationwide.”

Clearview AI has repeatedly come under fire due to its practice of scraping billions of photos from across the internet and storing them in a database for powerful facial recognition services.

“Common law has never recognised a right to privacy for your face,” Clearview AI lawyer Tor Ekeland said recently.

The company’s facial recognition system is used by over 2,200 law enforcement agencies around the world – and even commercial businesses like Best Buy and Macy’s, according to a recent leak.

In a press release, the ACLU wrote:

“The New York Times revealed the company was secretly capturing untold numbers of biometric identifiers for purposes of surveillance and tracking, without notice to the individuals affected.

The company’s actions embodied the nightmare scenario privacy advocates long warned of, and accomplished what many companies — such as Google — refused to try due to ethical concerns.”

However, even more concerning is Clearview AI’s extensive ties with the far-right.

Clearview AI founder Hoan Ton-That claims to have since disassociated from far-right views, movements, and individuals. Ekeland, meanwhile, has gained notoriety as “The Troll’s Lawyer” for defending clients such as neo-Nazi troll Andrew Auernheimer.

The ACLU says its lawsuit represents the first “to force any face recognition surveillance company to answer directly to groups representing survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, undocumented immigrants, and other vulnerable communities uniquely harmed by face recognition surveillance.”

Facial recognition technologies have become a key focus for the ACLU.

Back in March, AI News reported the ACLU was suing the US government for blocking a probe into the use of facial recognition technology at airports. In 2018, the union caught our attention for highlighting the inaccuracy of Amazon’s facial recognition algorithm – especially when identifying people of colour and females.

“Clearview’s actions represent one of the largest threats to personal privacy by a private company our country has faced,” said Jay Edelson of Edelson PC, lead counsel handling this case on a pro bono basis.

“If a well-funded, politically connected company can simply amass information to track all of us, we are living in a different America.”

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