NYPD uses facial recognition on mug shots of juveniles

NEW YORK — The New York Police Department has been loading thousands of arrest photos of children and teenagers into a facial recognition database despite evidence that the technology has a higher risk of false matches in younger faces.

For about four years, internal records show, the department has used the technology to compare images of crime scenes with its collection of mug shots taken of juveniles when they are arrested. Most of the photos are of youths 13 to 16 years old, but children as young as 11 have been included.

Elected officials and civil rights groups said the disclosure that the city is deploying a powerful surveillance tool on adolescents — whose privacy seems sacrosanct and whose status is protected in the criminal justice system — is a striking example of the Police Department’s ability to adopt advancing technology with little public scrutiny.

Several members of the City Council and a range of civil liberties groups said they were unaware of the policy until they were contacted by The New York Times.

Police Department officials defended the decision, saying it is just the latest evolution of a long-standing policing technique: using arrest photos to identify suspects.

“I don’t think this is any secret decision that’s made behind closed doors,” the city’s chief of detectives, Dermot Shea, said in an interview. “This is just process, and making sure we’re doing everything to fight crime.”

Other cities have begun to debate whether law enforcement should use facial recognition, which relies on an algorithm to quickly pore through images and suggest matches. In May, San Francisco blocked city agencies, including the police, from using the tool amid unease about potential government abuse. Detroit faces public resistance to a technology that has been shown to have lower accuracy with people with darker skin. Police there just revised a plan that allows using it only to help identify suspects in violent crimes or home invasions, dropping its use to scan faces in real time during credible terrorism threats, according to The Detroit News.

New York police said the department’s legal bureau had approved using facial recognition on juveniles. The algorithm may suggest a lead, but detectives would not make an arrest based solely on that, Shea said.

Still, facial recognition has not been widely tested on children. Most algorithms are taught to “think” based on adult faces, and there is growing evidence that they do not work as well on children.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the U.S. Commerce Department and evaluates facial recognition algorithms for accuracy, recently found the vast majority of more than 100 facial recognition algorithms had a higher rate of mistaken matches among children. The error rate was most pronounced in young children but was also seen in those ages 10-16.

Aging poses another problem: The appearance of children and adolescents can change drastically as bones stretch and shift, altering the underlying facial structure.