Police have misused facial recognition, researchers say

Police agencies have used altered photos, artist sketches and celebrity lookalikes in facial recognition searches while attempting to find and arrest criminal suspects, raising concerns over the unregulated technology’s risks of inaccuracy and abuse, new research released last week found.

Facial recognition systems have in recent years been used in thousands of law enforcement investigations across the country as a way to quickly identify a person of interest, and the systems are designed to match two similar photographs: typically a photo of someone caught on camera, and a corresponding photo in an official database.

But a new review by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology found police have used the systems in a number of questionable ways that could muddy the search results and potentially lead to misidentification or false arrest.

Some investigators edited the photos in hopes of revealing more matches, including swapping out facial features, blurring or combining parts of photos, and pasting in images of other people’s lips or eyes.

In one case, New York police detectives believed a suspect looked like the actor Woody Harrelson, so they ran the actor’s image through a search, then arrested a man the system had suggested might be a match.

The uses of distorted images, center researcher Clare Garvie said, boosted the chances that authorities would arrest and prosecute an innocent person. She compared the examples to an investigator taking a smudged fingerprint “and drawing in where he thinks the other lines should be.”

“That would be completely unacceptable,” she said. “So why is it acceptable for facial recognition?”

No federal laws govern the use of facial recognition, and dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies across the country have used the artificial intelligence software as a tool in their criminal pursuits.

Federal lawmakers have proposed new regulations on how companies deploy facial recognition systems, but not police or government agencies. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hold a hearing Wednesday on the technology’s impact on public liberties and civil rights.