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UK Police Say 92 Percent False Positive Facial Recognition Is No Big Deal (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A British police agency is defending its use of facial recognition technology at the June 2017 Champions League soccer final in Cardiff, Wales -- among several other instances -- saying that despite the system having a 92-percent false positive rate, "no one" has ever been arrested due to such an error. New data about the South Wales Police's use of the technology obtained by Wired UK and The Guardian through a public records request shows that of the 2,470 alerts from the facial recognition system, 2,297 were false positives. In other words, nine out of 10 times, the system erroneously flagged someone as being suspicious or worthy of arrest.
In a public statement, the SWP said that it has arrested "over 450" people as a result of its facial recognition efforts over the last nine months. "Of course, no facial recognition system is 100 percent accurate under all conditions. Technical issues are normal to all face recognition systems, which means false positives will continue to be a common problem for the foreseeable future," the police wrote. "However, since we introduced the facial recognition technology, no individual has been arrested where a false positive alert has led to an intervention and no members of the public have complained." The agency added that it is "very cognizant of concerns about privacy, and we have built in checks and balances into our methodology to make sure our approach is justified and balanced."
In a public statement, the SWP said that it has arrested "over 450" people as a result of its facial recognition efforts over the last nine months. "Of course, no facial recognition system is 100 percent accurate under all conditions. Technical issues are normal to all face recognition systems, which means false positives will continue to be a common problem for the foreseeable future," the police wrote. "However, since we introduced the facial recognition technology, no individual has been arrested where a false positive alert has led to an intervention and no members of the public have complained." The agency added that it is "very cognizant of concerns about privacy, and we have built in checks and balances into our methodology to make sure our approach is justified and balanced."
Rate of 8% successful, meaning almost 1 in 10 people are correctly identified. Not that bad.
Indeed. If you are looking for a suspect in a city of a million people, and this system flags 10 people, and upon double checking you find that one of the ten is the suspect, then that is pretty darn good.
The false positive rate, by itself, tells you nothing about the usefulness of a test.
I'd rather err on the side of false positives than false negatives (which let them slip away). A minor inconvenience is worth the extra security by far.
Exactly!
A few innocent lives may be lost, but that's a small price to pay for my peace of mind.
Catching criminals is a side effect. The main purpose is to create justification to investigate anyone they want.
When I hear such claims I like to use an example that perhaps highlights the problems itself better:
Take a baby and isolate it away, perhaps in a dungeon (or elsewhere horrible) or in the wild with wolves, and wait until it has fully matured.
Now take that person out of that isolation, give them 1 million dollars and toss them out into the real world.
What do you expect will happen to that person?
Yet this is EXACTLY what we did with people and countries. Threw them out, gave them money (if at all) to dampen our shame and left them to fend for themselves.
'Pfft you're free now, time to start acting correctly...'
We were not the best examples were we? Think about how the were treated... that is all they knew.
You are free, but we do not want you around us. We will not include you into our culture nor will we give you the same chances. We are born on the higher steps and act like we had to work to reach that height, while at the same time laughing at others that have to fight hard for every little step. And every step they do climb we not only complain why they only got one step, and then beat them back down.
Fact is, we all did sh1t to live in the wealth we have. We should be ashamed of ourselves for b1tching about others.
This is not only about people of color or other countries. This happens in OUR countries as well. Kids born into poverty, regardless of heritage or skin color, will face similar hardships.
This world is not perfect and not all are examples. Rich or poor have many bad examples. But those born with a golden spoon up their rears, should shut up about how hard life is.