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Software Matches Police Sketches To Mugshots
Zothecula writes "We've seen it in numerous TV shows and movies – the witness to a crime looks through a book of mug shots, then works with a police sketch artist to come up with a likeness of the nasty person they saw. After looking through hundreds of mug shots, however, it's possible that the tired-brained witness could look right at a photo of the guilty party and not recognize them. It's also possible that there is a mug shot of the criminal on a database somewhere out there, but that this particular witness will never see it. A computer system being pioneered at Michigan State University, however, could be the solution to such problems – it automatically matches faces in police sketches to mug shots."
This is a bad thing because the potential for misidentification is high. Couple this system with the notorious unreliability of eye witnesses and the potential for unintended coercion and you have a recipe for a constitutional disaster.
Whats the difference between police mugshots and facebook mugshots? I wouldn't think much..