Facial recognition tool leads to wrongful arrest

Originally published at: Facial recognition tool leads to wrongful arrest | Boing Boing

8 Likes

Adjacent…
Watching some American football over the weekend and I see the stadium jumbotron is showing The Office characters next to fans in the crowd that look similar… “Oh here is Angela from the Office!” kind of thing.
While all the fans are sitting there yucking it up and having a good time, I’m wondering if the camera operators have the time to scan for lookalikes? Probably what is happening is that the entire crowd is being facial scanned and the technicians and broadcasters are having fun* with the tech.

*:unamused:

5 Likes

shocked philip j fry GIF

4 Likes

As I understand it, there’s at least a couple camera ops whose whole job it is to rove around the crowd for jumbotron shots anyway. The lookalike thing was probably started as clearcom chatter among themselves.

3 Likes

Yeah this is why facial recognition and the ilk are VERY FUCKING BAD IDEAS TO USE AS YOUR SOLE MEANS OF EVIDENCE!

9 Likes

I knew it was going to be a Black man just from the headline. Please face it law enforcement peoples We are not in Bladerunner times yet. Facial recognition software just doesn’t work yet.

3 Likes

Next, they’ll arrest the real culprit, a Mr Buttle.

3 Likes

This is in my lane for sure.

For the past 30 years I’ve worked for national and international leagues doing game-day productions for both in-house (Jumbotron) and broadcast (FOX/TSN/ESPN).

It is rare (if ever?) that either of them have a dedicated camera that just shoots tights of fans. As for the celebrity lookalike stuff… an example for hockey… when we’re playing promotional videos on the Jumbo, it frees up our camera ops to scan the crowd looking for what we need for our promotions … famous faces, crazy hair, loud jackets… crew in the control room see this, chime in with their opinions… seats get noted by operators and when the time comes, you hope that fan is in their seat when the promotion comes up. In-between the cameras are busy shooting the game.

The odd time we’ll hear over the radio from a promotions team member who might say “I saw a guy in 320 with a loud tie” (if it happens top be loud tie night). But never, ever, do we get an alert from the HAL-2000 Facial Interceptor at check-in.

Facility security operates their own camera systems… they can track someone around the building if and how they want.

Having said all that, there’s always some company out there trying create demand or fill a need, and it’s the poor technicians who have to integrate that new hardware into the plant with varying results - we have a Kinect-like interactive segment where fans can juggle balls and whatever - it rarely works well, but it’s that fancy machine that goes ‘ping’ , so the bosses love it.

The competition among facilities to have the latest and glitzy tech will probably lead to some creepy dystopian fan experiences, I have no doubt about that.

4 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.