From New York Times. I'm Michael BAR on this as it is today Facial recognition is becoming an increasingly popular tool for solving crimes. The dailies anywhere speaks to Kashmir Hill about how that software is not treating everybody equally, its Monday August stopped and it's gonna get paper Corwin out that I am glad I haven't. I questioned are concerned before we start talking about what happened.

So? Where do you think we should start the story of this case Kashmir? The story started for the Williams family in January of twenty twenty, first, I have to call from her Thursday afternoon and farming Tin, Hills Michigan, which has just outside Detroit, picked up earlier Roscoe, regular birthday, and blessing Williams. A real iter is driving home from work she's picking up her daughter We saw the writer words and I got a call and she gets a call from somebody's. Sarah police officer. They immediately side. We're calling about Robert from an incident thousand and eighteen. He needs to turn himself in then so I was confused about. She is white and her husband, Robert Williams, is black and they said

I assume you hear you're his baby in Burma. Are that what you're, not together anymore, and why, that's my husband. What is theirs regarding visa, we can't tell you what he needs to come turn himself then, and I thought why didn't you call a pin in they said we can't you just give him a message. We too wise is often calling her she doesn't know, I'd officer is calling her all. She knows that the police want to be in touch with her husband, so she gives officer, her husband's number and then she calls Robert, and I said I just got a we call the. What did you do What what is it about? And while there talking, Robert Williams gets a car from the police department Cora answer. Instead of the from Detroit, only the contrary, myself in so of course delightful.

What means like what I can't tell you? Well I phone so myself like. Well, I can't a couple of days before his birthday, so he thought maybe it was a prank car became pretty clear. The person is serious about criminal elsewhere. The dry way and when he pulls into his driveway a police car, pull them behind him. Blocking a man and two officers get out near foul play you out the girl. The driver, my room, life is not. Are you our way under my year, if you're under arrest? For my number and the guy comes over, like away sheet of paper it's funny war on the cap larceny, but my uncle fuse. Why am I still am His wife comes out with his two young daughters and his oldest daughter, whose five as well

Miss half an hour back in the house, be back in a minute. They just making a mistake. The guy The army, where our already come on you sure you know the drill on my way downstairs arrest him. They accuse two pairs of handcuffs to get his hands behind his back, because it's a really big guy with. Moment seats around trying to get me in back a little bit parlour and off we go, and then they drive to detention centre uttered friend, your friends, your Buckshot Berkshire pictures. Then he's put nostalgia sleep overnight at their square on sale with two other guys

Why I you care for an online so when you actually find out why you ve been arrested, this club leg Larsan. So. They relate noon the next day. Around noon? The next day he is taken to an interrogation room, a nurse two detectives there and they have three pieces of paper face down in front of them and they turn over. You know the first sheet of paper and its a picture from a surveillance video. Of a large black man, standing in a store wearing a red cardinals cap, the black jacket and the detectives ask: is this year I left alone, and I said now: that's not me.

Returns on paper and they turn over a second piece of paper, which is just a close up of that same guy's face LISA Gasters Mercury. Nah nah me, Sir Robert Pigs, that piece of paper up hold it next to his own. But I want to buy all blackmail and says: do all black man looked the same to you. So what's your understanding Kashmir of what happened and to bring Robert Williams into that police department. So we're Williams had no idea what was happening but two years, earlier. In October, twenty eighteen, a man who was not him walk into. I shall know a store in downtown to try and channel is kind of like a high end store that sells expensive, watches and bikes says man came in. He was there for a few minutes.

He stole five watches, were thirty eight hundred dollars and walked out none of the employees there actually saw the theft occur and They had to review the surveillance footage They found the moment it happened, so they set that surveillance footage picture. The robber Williams had been shown to the joint police and the police turn to what a lot of police turn to these days. We may have a suspect that they don't recognize. A facial recognition system, so they ran a search on. This is what they call probe image this picture for them. The survey, video which is really grainy, it's it's not of a very good photo and the way these systems work is that they have access, not just him mugshots, but also to drivers. Licence photos you get

bunch of different results and there's a human embarked who decides which the results worse than those like the person who committed the crime so you're, saying the facial recognition algorithm basically create the line up of potential suspects and then for that line up some one picks the person that they think looks the most like the man in the surveillance, video right. And that is how they wound up arresting Robert Williams. So back in this room, the detectives now have the real robber Williams in front of them, and he doesn't look like this guy. They sat back and let them live with a face right. Since August copyright around to Kyle lean back and said. I guess the computer got around the computer that IRAN will throw me off? My

Syria and IRAN, and what is the significance of that statement that the computer? got it wrong, so this was in admission by the detectives that it was a computer that had pointed the anger at Robert Williams and that significant, because this is the first document in case of an innocent person being arrested because of a flawed facial recognition match and just to put all of this into context. First. Second, the last time that you and I talked Kashmir, we were talking about a different development and facial recognition. This new algorithm being used by some police departments that drew from pictures all over social

media and all over the internet to make a kind of super algorithm. But the fear wasn't that it wasn't accurate. It was almost that it was to accurate that it knew too much the what you're describing is something altogether different So when we talk about these recognition, we often think of it as a monolith that there's come one facial recognition, but in fact there is a bunch of different companies that all have their own algorithms and some work well and don't work well and some work. Well. Sometimes Lake identifying a really clear photo? Is a lot easier than identifying surveillance footage and why wouldn't police departments be using the most sophisticated, the most kind of up to date, version this software, I, MRS, where you run into just bureaucracy right. You have contracts with company,

is that go back years and just a lot of different vendors, and so in this case I tried to figure out exactly whose algorithms are responsible for Robert Williams getting arrested and I had a really dig down, and I discovered the police had no idea. You know they. Contract out to a company called data works plus, and data works, plus contracts out to two other company is called any see in rank one actually supply. The algorithm is this whole chain of companies that are involved, Hence there is no standardized testing, there's, no one really regulating mass theirs, Nobody saying we,

algorithms, you know pass the tasks to be used by law enforcement. Just up the police officers who, for the most part, seem to be just testing in the field to see if it works, if its identifying the right people. But the really big problem is that these systems have been proven to be biased order, it back The Michelle Obama podcast is out now and Spotify. The series brings listeners inside the former first. Ladies most candid and personal conversations showing us what speed well when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to open up and to focus on what matters most listen: free at Spotify, DOT, TK Slash Michelle Obama, this Acerra Canuck hosted the cereal podcast.

I want to tell you about our new show nice white parents, its reported by Junta Jaffee, while he's made some of the best most thought looking most emotional radio stories? I've ever heard back and twenty fifteen Hannah wanted to find out what would happen inside this one public school in her neighbourhood during a sudden influx of white students into a school that are barely had any weight students before and then not satisfied that she fully understood what she was saying. She went all the way back to the founding of the school and then in sixties and then forward again up to the present day and eventually hotter realized. She could put a name to the unspoken force that kept getting in the way of making the school better white parents. I've been waiting so long to tell people but this shall I now. I can finally say it: go listen to nice white parents knows why France is made by Cyril Productions, a New York Times company. You can find it wherever you get your podcast, so Kashmir,

understand how an algorithm can become biased, all the biased tones to come from how the algorithm astray and these algorithms tend to be trained by basically feeding them with a bunch of images of people. But the problem of the algorithms is that they tend to be trained with non diverse datasets. So someone so one good example is Many of the algorithms used by law enforcement and the EU. By government, in the U S are very good at devising white man and not as good as recognising black people or Asian Americans. But if you go to it, them from a company in China where they said it with a lot of images of asian people there really good at recognising Hannibal and not as good a recognising white men. So you can just you can see the biases that come in from the kind of data that we feed into these systems, and is this a widely agreed upon

Reality that, because of these methods, the algorithms used in the U S or just worse at identifying faces that aren't white men, a few years ago, and am I t researcher, did this study and found that facial recognition, algorithms were biased to be able to recognise white men better and shortly after that nest the national Institutes of standards and technology decide to run its own study on this. It found the same thing? It looked at over a hundred different algorithms and it found that they were biased and act. The two algorithms that were at the heart of this he's a robber Williams is case were in not study, so the

The algorithm that was used by this police department was actually studied by the federal government and was proven to be biased against faces, like Robber Williams. Exactly so, given these widely understood problems with these algorithms, how can police departments justify continuing to use them for boys departments are aware of the biased problem, but they feel that face recognition, issues too valuable tool in their tools to solve crimes, and air defence is that they never arrest. Somebody based on facial recognition alone, that facial recognition is only what they call an investigative lead. It doesn't supply probable cause for arrest. So what please respect do as they get a facial recognition, Match and you're supposed to do more as to getting so you can go to the persons. You know social media account and see if there are other photos of them.

Wearing the same clothes that they were wearing on the day they committed this crime or in? Oh, you can try to get proof that they were in that part of town on the data. The fact occurred know try to get location data. Basically find other evidence that this person is the person that comment the crime. But in the case of Robert Williams, they didn't do any other investigating. Based on that, they went out and they arrested Mister Williams, but if the police had done their job correctly, if they had looked into his social media accounts, if they had tried to get his location data from his phone records, essentially surveillance him more closely. Wouldn't that be its own what a violation just because their technology wrongfully identify this man? He gets more closely watched by the police without his knowledge right, and this is actually what police ass

facial recognition vendors to do they want to have more what you call false positives, because they want to have the greatest pool of possible suspects that they can cause. They want to find the bad guy huh, but there is. There is a real tool from that. I just you know, as a person has been reporting on technology for a decade, I just think people trust computers and even when we know something is flawed, if it's a computer telling us to do it. We just think it's right, and this is why we always used to see for a long time when mapping technology was first being too and it wasn't that great, you know people would drive into lakes, they would drive over cliffs because a mapping app said you're supposed to go straight here right and even though they could look,

and see that their life is going to be in danger. They would think well does that must know what I'm talking about. That's facial recognition. How and when I was reporting the story, all the experts what you said. This is surely not the first case, or somebody has men. Mistakenly, an innocent person has been mistakenly arrested because I'm a bad things, recognition that, but usually people don't find out about it. Please don't tell people that their They are because a face recognition, usually when they charge them. Those who say they are identified through investigative means it's kind of a vague. There were clues. That pointed at you, in that way, Roberts case was unusual, because there was so little evidence against him

sk. We had to tell him that they use facial recognition. You know to put him there. Might they showed him what most people don't get to see, which is this false match between his photo and the follow up the crime rate and what's happened? Sense Robert was arrested so Robert had to hire a lawyer to defend himself, but when he went to the hearing, the prosecutor decided to drop the case, but they dropped it without prejudice, which meant that they could charge him again for the same crime with the same crime. So, as I was reporting on the story, you know I went to the prosecutor's office, I went to the short police department. I said you know what happened here. Did you have any other evidence is seems like a clear misfire and misuse of facial recognition, and everyone involved was pretty defensive and said

You know there might be more evidence that proves the robber Williams did it, but after the story came out, everybody's tune changed dramatically prosecutor's office apologize said that Robert William should not spend any time in jail that fight police departments at this was a horrible investigation, the police, officer hers involved just did this. All wrong is now it's best at work, and they said that Robert Williams would have his information expunged from the system, his mugshots his dna, and they passed

We apologise to the Williams family, though the Williams family told me that no one ever actually called them to personally apologize, but he can no longer be charged in the future for this crime, that's exactly right and what about their use of facial recognition? Software? Has there been any change there. So one thing the Detroit Police departments advise while this was you know this was a case that predates this new policy. We have that says, you know we're only supposed to be using facial recognition for violent crimes, and what do you make of that? Why only use this tool for that on their justification is that when it comes to violent crimes- and it comes to murder- you know rape. They need to solve these cases and they'll use any clue they can t do it, including facial recognition, but I think but something that Roberts wife said when they pulled up to our house. They were already combative on the palm. They were grass him in the door. Way to me. What

You been argument, and ever even though we had comply You know what could have turned into an hour yard lake, because women differently in The recent news has shown us that adapting I wanted. I really can't feel like there's a shame to this at the police arresting you, even though you did nothing. Humiliating, has thus been ours. It's not my sanity rows of become like earlier and guess what I got arrested and what about for a robber himself? What has lifespan like for him? after the arrest, says very embarrassing for him didn't kind of painful in some way, so yet a perfect attendance at work until

that day that he was arrested and his wife had a email is boss and say that they had a family emergency, and then he couldn't chop that day. Once he did tell his boss what happened his boss said, you know you don't want to tell other people at work in a could be bad for you. The night home is, It is five all, but still awake. Joy was still open our. What are you doing up here, she'd away for you, I was like told you I'll be right back, like you, didn't, come right back up Uptowner, they made a mistake and it just took longer than we expected, but she started wanting to play cops and robbers and she would always pretend like he was the robber

stole something and she would need to lock him up in the living room where she told us that she told whenever Jackson refunded School, and we were assured that she teller teacher, did she tell your friends? Did we we're not sure, and we don't know what? say to people like bring it out of nowhere Lakota case anyone mentioned that he was arrested. But you didn't do anything has made you look back to see way like where you were October. To gene pool about was ended. I was on my face on my Myerst rambler. He has since look back and realize that he had posted to Instagram, basically the same time as the shoplifting was occurring. He was driving home from work the sun came on the radio that his mother loved. Song, we are one by. Maize and Frankie Beverly powers. Since

on my way home in the car. So it's a cop's had looked into his social media. If they had tried to verify that it was possible that he could have committed this crime, they could have found this video right. Yes, the police had done a real investigation. They would have found yet alibi that day, cashmere. Thank you so much. Thank you. Will it back.

The Michelle Obama podcast is out now and Spotify. The series brings listeners inside the former first. Ladies most candid and personal conversations showing us what Paul Well, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to open up and to focus on what matters most listen, free at Spotify, DOT, com, Slash Michelle Obama huge. What else you need federal unemployment benefits have expired for tens of millions of Americans after Congress fail to reach a deal to renew them last week. So what do you say to those thirty million Americans who are now?

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