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Chicago Robber Caught By Facial Recognition Sentenced To 22 Years

mpicpp (3454017) writes with this excerpt from Ars: "The first man to be arrested in Chicago based on facial recognition analysis was sentenced last week to 22 years in prison for armed robbery. ... In February 2013, Pierre Martin robbed a man at gunpoint while on a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train. After taking the man's phone, Martin jumped off the train. However, his image was captured by CTA surveillance cameras and was then compared to the Chicago Police Department's database of 4.5 million criminal booking images. Martin, who already had priors, had a mugshot in the database. He was later positively identified by witnesses. At trial, Martin also admitted to committing a similar robbery also on the Pink Line in January 2013—his face was captured during both robberies."

16 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Watch_Dogs by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 4, Funny

    Shoulda just hacked the Chicago camera system with his phone.

  2. Fingerprints by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is nothing more than the type of fingerprint matching that's been going on for many decades. It just puts a name to a person after the fact. Now on the other hand, if he was actively recognized via facial recognition as he was out and about in public and then apprehended, well that would be a different story.

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    1. Re:Fingerprints by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree, but I think there's another concern here as well: false positives are significantly more dangerous than with other fingerprinting techniques. If DNA samples or fingerprints provide false positives, we have (admittedly error-prone) eyewitnesses as a final layer of defense, and since people who look entirely different can have similar fingerprints or DNA signatures, it's likely that the people look nothing alike. Not so with facial recognition, since a false positive is likely to be close enough to a true positive that it will be incorrectly affirmed by eyewitnesses, even if the authorities don't bias them by telling them that the guy was a match.

      None of which is to say that I think we should stop using it, since it is a valuable tool. I merely think that it needs to be used with an understanding of its faults and taken with the grain of salt it deserves.

    2. Re:Fingerprints by Anubis+IV · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Spell it out for me then, because I'm clearly not getting it.

      Near as I can tell, they need to be able to demonstrate in court that they have a way of linking the guy in the train footage to the person they've apprehended. There may be a few links in the chain tying the person to the crime. If the police claim it's via facial recognition from the train footage, they'll need to be able to demonstrate that they can make that identification from the train footage. If CCTV footage gets involved, we've added an extra link to the chain, so they'll need to demonstrate that they can tie the person from the train footage to the CCTV footage (e.g. the person is seen heading in the same direction wearing the same clothes at the same time and location) and then can tie the CCTV footage to the mugshot, otherwise it'll do them no good. And if they're doing that, I don't see why anyone should have any issues with it, since it's no different than going to neighboring stores after a robbery to see if any of them have cameras that got a better view of the suspect's face. That's old-fashioned detective work, not something to fear.

      On the other hand, if all they're doing is matching CCTV footage against mugshots, without linking it back to the train footage, then they've failed to tie anyone to anything at all. All they can get from that is "previously arrested person X is currently at location Y", which wouldn't do them much good in court, and it wouldn't be useful to them in the least in getting a conviction since they wouldn't be able to demonstrate the link back to the suspect from the train footage.

      And that's before we even begin to address your claims about the NSA stuff, which I find highly unlikely, even with the revelations we've had (everyone knows it's the FBI that keeps the database on US citizens, not the NSA :P).

    3. Re:Fingerprints by alostpacket · · Score: 2

      I think his point is that fingerprint and DNA false positives dont lead to a suspect that looks like what a witness saw. Whereas facial regonition false positives almost guarantee that the person will at least look similar to what the witness saw. Thus for facial recognition, the witness-as-a-confirmation is not as compelling. It's almost the same piece of evidence, rather than two corroborating pieces.

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  3. FTFY by jklovanc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Chicago Robber Identified By Facial Recognition Sentenced To 22 Years

    Caught would imply that he was walking down the street and facial recognition directed authorities to him. That did not happen.

    1. Re:FTFY by jklovanc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wow, somebody being arrested for an actual crime that the suspect actually committed is a "police state"? In a public place it is best to assume someone is always recording so don't commit a crime.

  4. Mirror, seriously by budgenator · · Score: 2

    Every time he looks into a mirror in prison, Pierre D. Martin can blame his face for putting him behind bars.

    No Dude, poor life choises put you behind bars, the best years of your life down the tubes for a smartphone. This is a perfect example of how stupid is a action verb, not a state of being.

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  5. Re:My two cents by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Any remotely competent lawyer would get that kind of identification thrown out of court. Any lineup, even a photo lineup, without multiple options is inadmissible in court.

    Sounds to me like this was used as an investigative lead that helped them find other evidence, rather than as the principal evidence presented in court. This really isn't different than a police officer viewing the recording to see the offender's face, then going through books of mugshots to find the face, then investigating those people that the officer thinks might be the offender. This is simply the computer taking the image that the police officer identified and searching those "books" for close matches, then the police looking at the MO of the crime as compared to the MO of the person previously arrested, and investigating ones that have the most commonality first.

    In this case they identified a suspect, the suspect apparently had offended in this same way before, and the suspect was tried and convicted. This doesn't seem to violate any new privacy considerations- the recordings being collected themselves are nothing new, and the mugshot database isn't either. Simply making the comparison itself doesn't add any new fuel to the fire of personal liberty complaints or of violation of privacy.

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  6. Facial Recog has a high failure rate by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

    Just saying.

    All this will do is put stupid people in jail, while high-stealing bank execs walk the streets free.

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  7. Wear a balaclava by GrahamCox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe he deserved this, sounds like it.

    But it doesn't justify the mass surveillance being put in all over our public spaces. It can't even be justified on the cost, but far worse is the erosion of your freedom to go about your business without being tracked and monitored permanently. It might catch the odd transgressor, but that is not an acceptable enough reason to piss away all our privacy.

    Oh but you have nothing to hide, so what? Well, it was Joseph Goebbels who first made that pithy remark about having nothing to fear, and look where that ended up - many perfectly innocent people had everything to fear.

    The only reasonable response to mass CCTV is for everyone to wear a balaclava. Once the system is rendered useless, they might reconsider spending taxpayer's money on it. And it sends a strong message that we simply don't want to be tracked, even if we are not criminals.

  8. Re:What"s A Criminal To Do? by jopsen · · Score: 2

    Crime is no longer a career choice.

    Armed robbery of people on a train haven't been a profitable profession for at least 150 years :)
    And I'm basing that fact that it ever as profitable on movies :)

    Crime has long been the employment of quite a few members of society but now they will be caught.

    s/employment/desperate measure/

    By the way, criminals being caught is not a new thing... close to 1 percent of the prison service eligible US population is behind bars.

  9. Re:Its, ... its, ... by Anubis+IV · · Score: 2

    Wearing a mask is illegal in many states unless for medical reasons or weather.

    Your own source seems to disagree with you. According to it, about half of the states blacklist specific, prohibited activities, but otherwise allow masks for anything else, while the other half whitelist a broad set of permitted activities that hit most of the common cases, but otherwise disallow masks.

    Among those that blacklist activities, the lists are pretty much all the same: no wearing masks to conceal your identity while engaging in crime (i.e. it's one more charge they can add on top), no wearing masks to intimidate or harass people entitled to equal protection under the law (i.e. an anti-KKK clause that keeps them from wearing their hoods in public), and don't obstruct police officers. Among those that whitelist activities, they almost all carve out permitted exceptions for holidays, theatrical productions, Mardi gras, and the like, in addition to masks worn for work, health, weather, or religious reasons.

    If you wanted to do something like have everyone wear Guy Fawkes masks at a protest or demonstration, the only place you probably wouldn't be allowed to do it would be Washington D.C., since they specifically prohibit wearing masks at a demonstration (which seems like a First Amendment issue to me, but the Bill of Rights hasn't gotten in the way of D.C. enacting all sorts of draconian laws :-/).

  10. Re:My two cents by taustin · · Score: 2

    That isn't how lineups are done in real life. Real police work bears no resemblance whatsoever to the routine felonies committed by character of cop shows.

  11. Re:Return on Investment? by Shakrai · · Score: 2

    Sometimes TSA catches people that forget to leave their guns at home but never have they caught terrorists.

    Who forgets where their firearm is? I have a concealed carry license. Multiple ones in fact, the combination is good in 30-35 States. I can tell you at any moment exactly where all of my firearms are and what condition (loaded, unloaded, last time they were oiled, etc.) they're in. I have precious little sympathy for someone that "forgets" where their firearm is. The very least that should happen to them is they lose their concealed carry licenses, because they're clearly too fucking stupid to carry a deadly weapon in the public space. Revoke their drivers licenses too, while we're at it, because I'll bet you $10,000 they're the same idiots who text and drive.

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  12. Slippery slope by BoFo · · Score: 2

    Facial recognition is known to produce false positives. Identification of suspects by witnesses is well known to be notoriously unreliable and easily influenced by the interrogator. All I can hope is that this method will not be used to convict without corroborating evidence.

    Everything in the world is a double-edged sword. Another example is DNA evidence.

    For over a century, fingerprints have been the gold standard by which suspects were positively identified. Today, the reliability and uniqueness of an individual's fingerprints has been called into question. The one saving grace when a positive match can be found is that it is very difficult to falsify fingerprints found on a weapon or at the scene of a crime.

    Ah, but DNA is another matter altogether. We are being taught that individuals matched via DNA evidence leaves very little doubt, is it 1 in 7 Million, that the DNA found on the scene is that of the perpetrator. But what if the DNA is planted on the scene to frame an innocent patsy? Leaving a hair or blood sample is very easy to do. Couple that with the government and police compiling DNA databases of the citizenry and an entire new danger emerges.

    Every time there is a political protest or, the Occupy Wall Street movement is a good example -- what was ubiquitous at all those sites? Cameras recording facial metrics of those involved. Now I suspect the US government has a massive database of photographs processed to extract the necessary metrics to identify other photographs of the same person. False positives could create mayhem in a system where too many are already falsely convicted of crimes.

    No sir, I don't like it.