A hot potato: Detroit police will no longer make arrests based only on facial recognition software results. The change is part of a settlement in a lawsuit that saw a man wrongfully arrested after the technology misidentified him as a theft suspect. Robert Williams was arrested in January 2020 after his drivers' license photo was flagged as a likely match to a man seen stealing designer watches from a store in 2018.
During questioning, Williams was told he was being arrested based solely on the results of a facial recognition lineup. In a subsequent lawsuit that was settled on Friday, the city of Detroit agreed to pay Williams $300,000 and change the way it uses facial recognition technology (FRT). "We are extremely excited that going forward there will be more safeguards on the use of this technology with our hope being to live in a better world because of it," Williams told reporters, "even though what we would like for them to do is not use it at all.
" The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Williams, said facial recognition tends to misidentify people of color. There have been other wrongful arrests in which the technology was used, including a woman who was eight months pregnant accused of robbery and carjacking, and a man accused of property damage. As part of the settlement, the city agreed that any "FRT lead, combined with a lineup identification, may never be a sufficient basis for seeking an arrest warrant.
" Investigators must ensure that further indep.
