An article in The Guardian highlights the growing concerns about the widespread adoption of facial recognition technology by law enforcement agencies. In the US, despite being eight months pregnant, Porcha Woodruff was arrested on charges of carjacking and robbery. After being detained for 11 hours, on release, she was immediately taken to hospital to be treated for dehydration. Woodruff later found out that she was falsely identified by facial recognition. A month later, the charges were dismissed due to insufficient evidence.
Woodruff is the sixth known case of an arrest made due to false facial recognition in the US. All six people were Black. For years, privacy experts have warned about the inability of facial recognition technology to correctly identify people of colour and the privacy violations of systems that identify individuals using an image or their face.
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