Detroit Takes Important Step in Curbing the Harms of Face Recognition Technology
Under Detroit’s new rules, if police use face recognition technology at all during any investigation, they must record detailed information about their use of the technology, such as photo quality and the number of photos of the same suspect not identified by FRT. If charges are ever filed as a result of the investigation, prosecutors and defense attorneys will have access to the information about any uses of FRT in the case.
The Detroit Police Department’s new face recognition rules are among the strictest restrictions adopted anywhere in the country—short of the full bans on the technology passed by San Francisco, Boston, and at least 15 other municipalities. Detroit’s new regulations are an important step in the right direction, but only a full ban on government use of face recognition can fully protect against this technology’s many dangers. FRT jeopardizes every person’s right to protest government misconduct free from retribution and reprisals for exercising their right to free speech. Giving police the ability to fly a drone over a protest and identify every protester undermines every person’s right to freely associate with dissenting groups or criticize government officials without fear of retaliation from those in power.
Moreover, FRT undermines racial justice and threatens civil rights. Study after study after study has found that these tools cannot reliably identify people of color. According to Detroit’s own data, roughly 97 percent of queries in 2023 involved Black suspects; when asked during a public meeting in 2020, then-police Chief James Craig estimated the technology would misidentify people 96 percent of the time.
Williams was one of the first victims of this technology—but he was by no means the last. In Detroit alone, police wrongfully arrested at least two other people based on erroneous face recognition matches: Porcha Woodruff, a pregnant Black woman, and Michael Oliver, a Black man who lost his job due to his arrest.
Many other innocent people have been arrested elsewhere, and in some cases, have served jail time as a result. The consequences can be life-altering; one man was sexually assaulted while incarcerated due a FRT misidentification. Police and the government have proven time and time again they cannot be trusted to use this technology responsibly. Although many departments already acknowledge that FRT results alone cannot justify an arrest, that is cold comfort to people like Williams, who are still being harmed despite the reassurances police give the public.
It is time to take FRT out of law enforcement’s hands altogether.
Tori Noble is a Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This article is published courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
