A black man was wrongfully arrested after facial recognition software incorrectly matched his driver’s license photo to surveillance footage of someone shoplifting, civil liberties activists alleged in a complaint to Detroit police.
The American Civil Liberties Union said on Wednesday that the case is the first known wrongful arrest based on the use of the controversial technology.
In January, Robert Williams spent more than a day in police custody after someone stole watches from a Shinola store over a year before his arrest.
The ACLU alleged in the complaint that Detroit police “did nothing to attempt to identify the suspect” for five months until arranging a facial recognition search using the surveillance footage. The search “falsely identified” Williams as the suspect, but police “did nothing further” with the search results for another four months, the ACLU said.
An arrest warrant was issued for Williams after a security guard was shown six photos of potential suspects, including Williams’s photo. The guard did not witness the shoplifting in person but saw it on surveillance footage, according to the ACLU.
The complaint said law enforcement notified Williams in January that he needed to come into the police station to be arrested, but police would not tell him why. Williams declined, and police showed up at his home to arrest him.
“He was held overnight in a crowded and filthy cell without being given information about what was happening to him or what he was being accused of. The next day, he was interrogated, and in the course of the interrogation it became clear that his arrest was based on an erroneous facial recognition identification. The investigating officer looked confused, told Mr. Williams that the computer said it was him but then acknowledged that ‘the computer must have gotten it wrong,’” the ACLU said, adding that police still refused to release Williams until after he was arraigned and released on bond.
A prosecutor later dropped the charges against Williams.
The ACLU demanded that Detroit police stop using the “flawed” facial recognition software as an investigatory tool and remove all photographs of Williams from any facial recognition database.
Tech companies Microsoft and Amazon have halted facial recognition sales to law enforcement following nationwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality. A third, IBM, said it was leaving the facial recognition business altogether over concerns that it would be used for racial profiling and mass surveillance.
