LAPD: We Know That Mug

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,66142,00.html>

Wired News

LAPD: We Know That Mug 
Associated Press

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66142,00.html

08:33 AM Dec. 26, 2004 PT

LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with
facial-recognition software it says will help identify suspects, but civil
liberties advocates say the technology raises privacy concerns and may not
identity people accurately.

 "It's like a mobile electronic mug book," said Capt. Charles Beck of the
gang-heavy Rampart Division, which has been using the software. "It's not a
silver bullet, but we wouldn't use it unless it helped us make arrests."


 But Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties
Union of Southern California, said the technology was unproven and could
encourage profiling on the basis of race or clothing.

 "This is creeping Big Brotherism," Ripston said. "There is a long history
of government misusing information it gathers."

 The department is seeking about $500,000 from the federal government to
expand the use of the technology, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
Police have been testing it on Alvarado Street just west of downtown Los
Angeles.

 In one recent incident, two officers suspected two men illegally riding
double on a bicycle of being gang members. If they were, they may have been
violating an injunction that barred those named in a court documents from
gathering in public and other activities.

 As the officers questioned the men, Rampart Division Senior Lead Officer
Mike Wang pointed a hand-held computer with an attached camera at one of
the men. Facial-recognition software compared his image to those of recent
fugitives, as well as to dozens of members of local gangs.

 Within seconds, the screen displayed nine faces that had contours similar
to the man's. The computer said the image of one particular gang member
subject to the injunction was 94 percent likely to be a match.

 That enough to trigger a search that yielded a small amount of
methamphetamine. The man did turn out to be the gang member, and was
arrested on suspicion of violating the injunction by possessing illegal
drugs. The city attorney's office has not yet decided whether to charge the
man.

 The LAPD has been using two computers donated by their developer, Santa
Monica company Neven Vision, which wanted field-testing of its technology.
The computers are still considered experimental.

 The Rampart Division has used the devices about 25 times in the two months
officers have been testing them. The technology has resulted in 16 arrests
for alleged criminal contempt of a permanent gang injunction, and three
arrests on outstanding felony warrants.

 On one occasion, the computer was used to clear a man the officers
suspected of being someone else, police said.

 So far, the city attorney has filed seven injunction cases in arrests that
involved the technology. A judge dismissed a case after questioning the
technology, but it has been refiled. Suspects in two cases pleaded guilty.

 Other experiments with facial-recognition software have had mixed results.
Officials in Tampa, Fla., stopped using it last year because it didn't
result in arrests. And a Boston's Logan International Airport in 2002, two
systems failed 96 times to identify people who volunteered to help test it.
The technology correctly identified 153 other volunteers.

 Luis Li, chief of the Los Angeles city attorney's criminal branch, said
the technology should not present legal problems because it was used only
as an initial means of identification.

 "If you are standing in the street, you have no expectation of privacy,"
he said.

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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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